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Emotional Intelligence in Nursing

By Mumtaz Ali Jiwani

Emotions plays a vital role in our lives, every situation good or bad filled with lots of emotions in it. Sometimes it’s get very difficult for a person to handle his or her own emotions. As emotions are the part of everybody’s life but in my opinion nurses are the ones who encounter the emotional burden and conflicts more frequently than any other. The person who can handle their emotions and maintain the effective relationships are called to be emotionally intelligent.

Emotional intelligence is very important in nursing profession because it helps nurses to build effective nurse patient relationship. Nurses have to first manage her own emotions than she has to understand the patient’s feelings. Recker (2001) cited O, Neil in his article, which explains what actually emotional intelligence is
Emotional intelligence is a different way of being smart. It includes knowing what your feelings are and using your feelings to make good decisions in life. It’s being able to manage distressing moods well and control impulses. It’s (sic) being motivated and remaining hopeful and optimistic when you have setbacks in working toward goals. It’s (sic) empathy; knowing what the people around you are feeling. And it’s social skill—getting along well with other people, managing emotions in relationships, being able to persuade or lead others, (O’Neil, 1996, p. 6).

Emotional intelligence is a capability to recognize our own feelings and of others, it is the monitoring of us and managing our own emotions. Nurses need to understand the power of emotional intelligence as a key skill for flourishing, and satisfying nurse patient relationship. Emotional intelligence basically perceives regulating and understanding the emotions and it increases the cognitive ability of the nurse to make judgment and cope with the situations. Kooker, Shoultz & Codier (2007) stated, “Recently Moss (2005) related emotional intelligence to enhancement of any role in nursing, especially leadership”. In context to Pakistan the requirement of emotional intelligence application is very necessary because Pakistan has the shortage of nurses and the available nurses are burnout with their work overload. Due to this they are not able to understand their own feelings and emotions so how they can understand others and this may worsen the situations. Therefore they are not able to build caring and empathetic nurse client relationship, for this reason Pakistani nurses has to understand the concept and apply this in their nursing practice to promote satisfied relationship and in this way we can retained our nurses also. According to Kooker, Shoultz & Codier (2007) “The use of emotional intelligence concepts may provide fresh insight into ways to keep nurses engaged in practice and to improve nurse retention and patient/client outcomes”.

Different psychologist developed different models to understand and evaluate the emotional intelligence of the person. According to Kooker, Shoultz & Codier (2007) the first tool was developed is based on Bar-On’s (1997) work on emotional quotient and it basically studied the personality traits of an individual. The second model is Ability/intelligence model and it was given by Mayer and Salovery in 1993 which helps to evaluate the abilities of identifying and understanding emotions of self and others, and emotional problem solving skills. Then in 1995 Goleman proposed the third model called as Mixed or performance Model, this model has characteristics of both the previous models and mainly focus on performance of a human being.
To improve our emotional intelligence one has to develop five types of skills, which were well discussed by Recker (2001). Initially a person has to be self-aware and understand their own feelings because it helps the person to put eye on their own thoughts and feelings and they will be able to understand the reason for their feelings in the specific situation. Secondly, the managing emotions is the skill helps the person to display his or her emotions in communally appropriate manner and it also helps the person to control the behavior like sadness, anger, and frustrations. To be successful in these skills the third skill, which a person need, is self motivation which holds back the destructing impulses and person will be able to complete his or her goal effectively. Till here we talked about how person can understand own self and feeling but now he or she has to understand others also because emotional intelligence is handling own and other’s feeling to manage circumstances. If we talk about nurses she has to be empathetic towards her clients because empathy is putting you in other’s shoes and to feel the same way as they are feeling. Here sympathy doesn’t work because it is just feeling pity for someone but we are not able to understand the deepness and pains from which an individual is going through, so it’s better to be empathetic rather than sympathetic. The last but the most important skill is to build the social interaction with your patients and the people working around, as social interaction will ease the sharing of emotions and feelings and helps the nurse to control her emotions and her patient’s emotions.

On the contrary there are some hurdles which can interfere with the person’s emotional intelligence and these obstacles are discussed by Recker (2001) “There are some patterns that block the use of a person’s emotional intelligence: fear and worry, avoiding pain, negative self-image, unrealistic expectations, and blaming others”. According to him when these blocks occur, the person’s emotional intelligence will become ineffective and it ends up into unsuccessful resolution of emotional problem.

In conclusion, emotional intelligence is combination of skills which helps a person to control and overcome their own emotional problems. And fortunately it also helps to understand and control others emotions which ends up into proper resolution of emotional conflict. I would like to recommend that we as a nurses have to understand the importance of emotional intelligence in our profession in order to give self-satisfying and patient satisfying care that is the aim of this noble profession.