Exploring emotional intelligence-implications for professional nursing practice

Abstract

Emotional intelligence (EI) is a valuable set of ideas that can be used in the workplace and in the home as a parent, teacher, or manager. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), health professionals play a central and critical role in improving access to and providing quality health care for the population. Mechanisms for optimizing the strengths and skills of health professionals will be essential to achieving the aims of health care. The working environment of health care professionals provides stress, adjustment problems, and mental health issues both in the professional and personal life and can directly or indirectly influence the quality of care provided to the consumers or clients. The statistics and findings from research studies suggest that healthcare professionals are at high risk of having psychological problems and burnout syndromes, and the job culture also provides a stressful environment, as explained in many studies. While the emotional aspects of clients are cared for, it is necessary that the health professionals themselves should be mentally and emotionally healthy to ensure better quality client care. Developing EI among nurses is very important as they are more concerned with a holistic care approach to the client and family. So, emotions, emotional behavior, and emotional literacy play a very important role in the nursing field. The implications of EI for nurses are applied in clinical practice, research, administration, and education.