Promoting resilience and lower stress in nurses and improving inpatient experience through emotional intelligence training in China: A randomized controlled trial

Background: Emotional intelligence training relieves stress and promotes resilience among nurses. Previous studies have not sufficiently explored the effect of emotional intelligence training among nurses on the experience of inpatients under their care. Objective: To explore the effects of emotional intelligence training on emotional intelligence, resilience, and perceived stress among nurses and examine how training affects inpatient experience. Design: Randomized controlled trial. Setting: A tertiary general hospital in Changsha, China. Participants: A total of 103 nurses were randomly selected from 20 wards. Methods: The wards were randomized into two groups. The intervention group (n = 53 nurses) received emotional intelligence training in two phases: Phase I-system training phase, twice a week for one month; Phase II-a consolidated learning phase, once a week for 11 months. The control group (n = 50) received daily briefings in meetings between head nurses, which were held regularly to discuss specific problems. There was no emotional intelligence training conducted with the control group. Data were collected at baseline and after the intervention. Results: Emotional intelligence training improved emotional intelligence, resilience, and stress in the intervention group. The control group scored lower on the Wong and Law's Emotional Intelligence Scale and all subscales, showed stability in the scores on the Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale and its subscales, and very little change in stress scores. Repeated measures analysis of variance showed significantly greater beneficial changes in the intervention group on all but the optimism subscale. There were suggestive differences in the predicted direction between the emotional intelligence training wards and the control wards at post-test on the patient experience scale and the four subscales. Conclusion: Our study suggests that emotional intelligence training improves emotional intelligence, resilience, and stress among nurses and leads to improvements in inpatient experience. Emotional intelligence training should be part of nurse education to improve the quality of care nurses provide and their ability to work without increased stress.