The effect of emotional intelligence training on general health promotion among nurse

INTRODUCTION: The hospitals are a stressful environment for employees, especially nurses. Stress and other health problems may lead to occupational burnout and reduction of nurses’ efficiency. The aim of the current study is to investigate the effect of emotional intelligence training on health promotion of nurses in Sabzevar Hospitals. METHODOLOGY: The current study is a field trial with a random control group. The sample group was 135 nurses of Sabzevar Hospitals. They were then divided randomly into experimental and control groups. First, all of the samples answered the questionnaire of personal information, Bar-On Emotional Intelligence, and General Health Questionnaire. The first group (intervention) was trained by giving the speech, and the second group (control) did not receive any intervention about the subject of the study. The experimental group was then trained for the components of emotional intelligence and answered the questionnaire again. The significance level was considered as P < 0.05. RESULTS: The results showed that the distribution of qualitative variables in the study was similar and also the scores of emotional intelligence and the dependent variables after intervention in the intervention group had a significant and inverse relationship, meaning that the score of emotional intelligence decreased with the score of general health score. This could be significant in comparison to the two groups. Findings showed that emotional intelligence at the beginning of the study in the intervention and control groups were 35.03 ± 32 and 30.89 ± 33, respectively, and after the intervention, it was 29.68 ± 35 and 42.89 ± 34, respectively. Total general health was 19.76 ± 84 and 18.77 ± 77 in the case group before intervention and 14.55 ± 56 in the case group and 17.68 ± 52 in the control group, respectively (P < 0.001). CONCLUSION: Findings indicated the significant mutual effect of emotional intelligence changes and general health variables. It means as the score of emotional intelligence gets more, health score decreases and the rate of general health increases.