The relationship between emotional intelligence and occupational burnout among nurses in critical care units

Emotional intelligence is a set of non-cognitive skills that enhances individual's ability to successfully encounter environmental pressures especially occupational burnout. Therefore, the present study was conducted to determine the relationship between occupational burnout and emotional intelligence. The present research is a type of correlation studies, which was performed cross-sectionally and with stratified random sampling method on 150 nurses of social security hospitals in Tehran in 2009. For data collection, Maslach's Burnout and Shrink's emotional intelligence questionnaires were used. Data were collected through Likert scale method, and were analyzed using t-test as well as Pearson correlation with the significance level of 0.05 and SPSS 17 software. There was a significant and inverse relationship between emotional intelligence and emotional exhaustion among nurses (p=0.016 and r=−0.234). There was a direct significant correlation between emotional intelligence and personal accomplishment (p<0.001 and r=0.0441). No meaningful relationship was observed between emotional intelligence and depersonalization (p=0.124 and r=−0.150). Furthermore, a remarkable difference was found between males and females in terms of emotional intelligence (p=0.048). Having emotional intelligence can lead to decreased occupational burnout; therefore, social security hospitals are recommended to attempt holding required training courses in order to reduce nurse's occupational burnout.