Nurse Manager's Emotional Intelligence in Educational Hospitals: A Cross-sectional Study from the West of Iran

Abstract

Introduction: Identifying and promoting nurse managers' emotional intelligence is critical in order to promote the quality of health care and educational services. Effective managers deploy emotional intelligence for control and management of their own and employees’ feelings and emotions in order to achieve organisational goals. Personal characteristics of managers could also influence their management, leadership and quality of services at any organisation and personnel's performance as well. Aim: This study aimed to investigate nurse managers' emotional intelligence in educational hospitals of Hamadan University of Medical Sciences. Materials and Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted with 370 nurse managers of five educational hospitals of Hamadan University of Medical Sciences, Iran in 2016. Data were collected using inspired Bradberry's Emotional Intelligence Questionnaire and were analysed by descriptive and inferential statistics using Pearson correlation coefficient test, t-test and Variance analysis. Results: Emotional intelligence of nurse managers was excellent with good ability level 216 (58.3%), moderate ability level 134 (36.2%) and low and very low ability level 20 (5.4%). The mean score of nurse managers' emotional intelligence was 80.46±6.7 which interpreted good ability level. There was significant relation between mean score of nurse managers' emotional intelligence and gender, age, marital status, number of children, educational level, work experience, managerial work experience, job and life satisfaction (p=0.04). Conclusion: The results indicate a significant and positive relationship between emotional intelligence and some demographic characteristics. Moreover, nursing management boards should work on all aspects of emotional management and consider demographic characteristics for selection of managers.

Keywords

• empathy
• self-awareness
• self-regulation
• self-motivation
• social skill