This study investigated nurses’ emotional intelligence, nursing performance, organizational commitment, and turnover intension, and the relationship between nurses’ emotional intelligence and nursing performance, organizational commitment, turnove...
This study investigated nurses’ emotional intelligence, nursing performance, organizational commitment, and turnover intension, and the relationship between nurses’ emotional intelligence and nursing performance, organizational commitment, turnover intension.
Data was collected from 460 nurses in a 1200-bed hospital located in Seoul, Korea, using a self-administered questionnaire, from the 29th of August to the 13th of September in 2005.
The instruments were Wong & Law’s(2002) emotional intelligence scale, Park’s(1988) nursing performance appraisal questionnaire, Mowday et al.’s OCQ(1979) and Lee’s(2002) turnover intension questionnaire.
Data was analyzed using SPSS WIN 10.0. Partial Correlation Coefficient was used to analyze correlations among emotional intelligence, nursing performance, organizational commitment, and turnover intension.
Age, marital status, and years of clinical experience that might affect emotional intelligence were controlled using partial correlation coefficient.
The results were as follows;
The average age of participants was 28.71 years, 26~30 years were the highest in numbers by 55.65%, and 73.48% of them was below 30 years.
The participants with years of clinical experience 1~3 were highest in numbers by 33.9%. 66.09% of them were unmarried, and 76.52% had bachelor’s degree.
Significant positive correlation was found between emotional intelligence and nursing performance, organizational commitment, but there was no significant relationship between emotional intelligence and turnover intension.
Each of the 4 factors of emotional intelligence(Self-emotion appraisal, Others’ emotion appraisal, Use of emotion, Regulation of emotion) has a significant positive relationship with nursing performance and organizational commitment.
Regulation of emotion has a negative relationship with turnover intension, while the other 3 factors have no significant relationship.
The average score for emotional intelligence was 3.582 out of 5. The score on each factor was 3.815 for Self-emotion appraisal, 3.550 for Others’ emotion appraisal, 3.671 for Use of emotion and 3.294 for Regulation of emotion.
There was a significant difference according to age, marital status, years of clinical experience, but no significant difference according to level of education.
The average point for nursing performance appraisal was 3.844 out of 5, and there was a significant difference according to age, marital status, years of clinical experience, and level of education.
The average point for organizational commitment was 3.326 out of 5, and there was a significant difference according to age, marital status, years of clinical experience. There was no significant difference according to level of education.
The average point for turnover intension was 3.216 out of 5, and there was a significant difference according to age, marital status, and years of clinical experience. There was no significant difference according to level of education.
In conclusion, nurses with higher emotional intelligence showed higher nursing performance as well as organizational commitment.
It is meaningful to adapt emotional intelligence as an individual’s internal factor in order to identify the affecting factors on nursing performance and organizational commitment, while existing studies were mostly focused on the extrinsic environmental factors such as leadership, stress, and other working environmental factors.
This study has practical implications on recruiting and training new nurses. It is important to recognize the needs for considering emotional intelligence on recruiting and training new nurses. And also addresses needs for including or developing a nursing educational program to increase nurses’ emotional intelligence. The results also suggest that the further researches need to identify influencing factors of emotional intelligence on nurses’ performance and organizational commitment.