Investigating the relationship between Psychological Stress in clinical setting and Emotional Intelligence of nursing students

Emotional intelligence includes a series of characteristics that have the ability to affect a person's overall ability to respond to environmental needs and stress. Due to the stressful nature of the clinical environment, this study was conducted with the aim of determination the relationship between psychological stress in the clinical environment and emotional intelligence of nursing students of Hamadan University of Medical Sciences in 2022.

In this descriptive cross-sectional correlational study, 214 nursing students of the 2nd to 8th terms of Hamedan University of Medical Sciences were included in the study by census method. Data collection tools included demographic characteristics checklist, Siberia Schering's Emotional Intelligence questionnaire and Cohen's psychological stress in clinical setting questionnaire. Data analysis was done by descriptive statistics, Pearson correlation coefficient, one-way ANOVA and independent sample t-test in SPSS 25 software.

According to the results; the mean (standard deviation) of emotional intelligence scores was 106.15 (10.59) and psychological stress in the clinical environment was 52.01 (12.38). It was also found that there is an inverse and significant statistical relationship between emotional intelligence and psychological stress of students in the clinical environment (r = -0.26, P < 0.001).

Higher emotional intelligence effectively reduces the psychological stress in the clinical environment of nursing students. Therefore, it is suggested that relevant officials with targeted planning and holding classes and workshops to strengthen emotional intelligence; take steps to strengthen it in different students, especially nursing students.