Emotional Intelligence as a Predicator of Managing Patient Relationship in Nursing Profession-A Study

Nursing is a challenging profession as it requires expertise, accuracy, specialized skills andabilities. In addition to technical skills, it requires emotional competences to take care of sick individuals and theirfamilies. Nurses need to operate sophisticated medical equipment as part of a multidisciplinaryteam and adapt to constantly changing environments. Along with that they have to remain calmand courteous during times of intense stress and critical decisions. In these situations emotional intelligence play vital role to balance both their personal and professional life situations. There is a popular belief that higher the emotional intelligence of nurses better will be their ability to manage patient relationship.

The present study is the part of a large study conducted on 300 nurses working in 5 different hospitals (both in public and private sector) in the state of Chhattisgarh to assess whether their demographic variables, emotional intelligence and ability to manage patient relationship are related with each other.

The study reveals that their exist strong, significant and positive correlation (.750) between emotional intelligence and ability to manage patient relationship.

The findings showed that there was no statistically significant correlation between the demography, emotional intelligence and ability of nurses to manage patient relationship. Thus irrespective of the demography nurses have to perform and serve patients. However, emotional intelligence of nurseshas a significant role in managing patient relationship. Emotional intelligence of nurses acts as an important predicator of managing patient relationship. So effort should be made by the management by training and retrain to develop and enhance this quality to better serve patient empathetically and sympathetically.