Emotional intelligence skills: is nurses’ stress and professional competence related to their emotional intelligence training? a quasi experimental study

Introduction: Emotional intelligence is a social skill thatcontrols stress and affects one’s ability to cope with the demandsand environmental pressures; it so can improve professionalcompetence in health care providers such as nursing students.Training on emotional intelligence increases the mental healthand influences the mutual relationships, stress, depression andaggression. This study aimed to determine the effect of emotionalintelligence skills training program on the stress and academicsuccess of nursing students in a higher education health complex.Methods: This study is a quasi-experimental study with aneducational intervention. The participants included 100 studentsof nursing selected by stratified random sampling from bothgenders. They were randomly categorized into two interventionand control groups including 50 subjects, respectively. We usedMeyer and Salvia model in Emotional Intelligence training in theintervention group. During the training sessions in the interventiongroup, the control group did not receive any intervention. Academicstress and professional competence in both groups were measuredbefore and two weeks after the experiment. SPSS version 21 wasused to analyze the data, using Paired t-test, independent t-test,Wilcoxon, Mann-Whitney and Chi-Square tests. Results: The mean age of the participants was 20±2.14 yearsold. According to the results, the mean difference of the changesin the professional competence (p<0.001), total academic stress(p<0.001), and the four areas of academic stress such as emotionalresponse (p<0.001), physical response (p<0.001) and physiologicalresponse (p<0.001) were significant. The intervention group, ascompared with the control group, showed no significant effect onthe other factors of academic stress such as frustration, conflict,academic pressure, changes and self-imposed stress.Conclusion: The education of emotional intelligence componentscan improve the efficiency of nursing care services and professionalcompetence due to deceased stress.