Relationship between nurse's moral intelligence and patient's satisfaction from nursing care

Nurse's commitment to ethics principles, in addition to improve quality of nursing care, is an effective factor to enhance patient satisfaction. Since nurses ethical performance is greatly influenced by the conceptual and moral criteria such as moral intelligence.
Aim: This study was investigated relationship between moral intelligence in nurses and patients satisfaction of nursing care.
Methods and materials: This was a descriptive -correlational study which was performed on (163) nurses and (489) patients who received nursing care in five educational and clinical centers of Hamada University of Medical Sciences in (2014). Nurses were selected based on stratified proportional random sampling and patients were selected based on simple random sampling from different parts clinical centers, respectively. Using Lennick and Kiel’s moral intelligence (2005) and Biering’s patient satisfaction from nursing care (2006) questionnaires data were collected. Using Cronbach’s alpha, reliability of both questionnaires were measured. The alpha coefficient for moral intelligence was (0.86) and for patient satisfaction was (0.71) respectively. Applying descriptive statistics (mean and standard deviation) and inferential statistics (Pearson moment correlation coefficient and stepwise multiple regression analysis) data were analyzed by SPSS16.
Mean score for nurses moral intelligent was (76.68, SD=6.55) which based on the questionnaire’s standard was at a good level. Mean score for patient satisfaction was (98.27, SD=9.3) which was at a moderate level. There was a significant and positive correlation between nurse's moral intelligent and patients’ satisfaction (r =0.75, p It is recommended to nurse managers to provide facilities such as educational workshop to create possibility of enhancing nurses’ moral intelligent; because it is would be improve their responsibility to patients.