Is Emotional Intelligence an Important Concept in Nursing Education?

Advances in medical treatments and shorter hospitals stays necessitate nurses who possess a high level of working knowledge in both disease processes and the technology to treat them. Nurses are expected to not only be skilled technicians, but they are required to have a high capacity for compassion, empathy, leadership, flexibility, resiliency, and resourcefulness. Working nurses know that the care of an individual is more than the completion and assessment of tasks; it’s holistic care and a relationship with the individual that makes nursing care successful. Therefore, the careful education of today’s nurses needs to reflect this amalgamation of skills. While a large amount of nursing focuses on the cognitive knowledge needed to become an effective nurse, what attention is being given to the affective knowledge required of professional nursing practice?

Purpose: The purpose of this presentation is to examine the concept of emotional intelligence, define the concept for application, and examine the implications that are relevant to the professional nurse. Definitions from leading proponents for the application of EQ are considered and compared for similarities and differences while providing a conceptual analysis for greater clarification and future research.

Methods: Research for this concept analysis was retrieved from electronic databases including EBSCO host, Cinahl, and PubMed from the years 1993 to 2013.

Results: Attributes related to emotional intelligence include self-awareness, empathy, motivation, and resiliency. Antecedents include emotions, both the existence of emotions, and prior experiences with them, prior experiences, and arguably motivation and resiliency which have characteristics of both attributes and antecedents.  Commonly agreed upon consequences include increased levels of independence, confidence, the ability to express oneself and defend personal opinions greater adaptability, resiliency, stress adaptation, and better coping behaviors higher levels of understanding and tolerance, increased ability to build and maintain relationships, and the potential for better teamwork.

Conclusion: Through analysis of the concept emotional intelligence, it is clear that there are pertinent implications for assessing EQ as it pertains to nursing instruction. Through the use of careful perception of emotion and understanding of how personal attitudes and behaviors may affect others, professional nurses have the ability to improve patient outcomes. Nurses with high levels of EQ are motivated to provide holistic care, and they use their knowledge and comprehension of emotions to influence their clinical judgments. A nurse with less understanding of the dynamics involved in complex relationships and therapeutic communication risks patient safety. Nurses with high EQs should be prized for their independence, reliability, and resiliency in the face of difficult situations, and nursing educators should seek to increase these abilities in their nursing candidates.