Emotional intelligence and nursing: Comment on Bulmer-Smith, Profetto-McGrath, and Cummings (2009).

The aim of this commentary is to address a number of issues and omissions arising from the integrative review of Bulmer-Smith et al. (2009) on emotional intelligence (EI) and nursing. An important objective is to bring to the attention of readers the growing research on trait EI (or trait emotional self-efficacy), which did not feature in Bulmer-Smith et al.’s review. As a scientific alternative to the proliferating self-help models, trait EI theory connects the construct to mainstream research on differential psychology and has been used as the main reference framework in areas as diverse as nursing (Quoidbach and Hansenne, 2009), psychoneuroendocrinology (Mikolajczak et al., 2007), relationships (Smith et al., 2008), behavioural genetics (Vernon et al., 2008), and leadership (Villanueva and Sánchez, 2007). Absent fromBulmer-Smithetal.’s reviewisany reference to the major distinction between trait EI and ability EI (e.g.,