The Investigation of Emotional Intelligence in the Nursing Practice of Greek Nurses

Background: Emotional intelligence is recognized to be a significant factor in both individual performance and organizational performance. It is a personal characteristic that combines emotion with intelligence in order to solve problems and make decisions. Aim: To examine, through nursing narratives, the way nurses perform during their professional practice, and whether elements of the emotional intelligence concepts can be identified in the practice of their profession. Method: They were analyzed 15 nurses stories with context analysis. Results: The stories of nurses were categorized based on the theoretical framework of emotional intelligence in four thematic domains: self-management, self-awareness, social awareness and social/ relationship-management. The most frequent field represented in the narratives was that of self-management, with a rate of appearance of 32%, followed by self-awareness (28%), social/relationship-management (22%), and finally, social awareness (18%). From these findings it appears that the nurses’ stories reflect evidence of all of the domains of emotional intelligence, and that this is related to the implementation of nursing knowledge in the nurses’ professional practice in various different contexts. Conclusions: The use of emotional intelligence concepts may provide ways of improving professional practice in the nursing profession.