Emotional intelligence and caring behaviour in nursing

The research reported in this paper relates six dimensions of nurses' emotional intelligence (EI) with two dimensions of their caring behaviours. One hundred and twenty nurses self-reported their EI, and three patients of each one described their caring behaviours. The main findings are: (a) nurses' EI explains a significant but low unique variance of caring behaviours; (b) self-encouragement and self-control against criticisms are the best predictors; (c) high empathy can have positive or negative impact on caring behaviours depending on the way it combines with other EI dimensions.