Influence of Emotional Skills on Attitudes towards Communication: Nursing Students vs. Nurses

María del Carmen Giménez-Espert (), Sandra Maldonado and Vicente Prado-Gascó
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María del Carmen Giménez-Espert: Nursing Department, Faculty of Nursing and Chiropody, University of Valencia, Avd/ Menéndez Pelayo, s/n, 46010 Valencia, Spain
Sandra Maldonado: Nursing Department of the School of Health Sciences, Human Services and Nursing, Lehman College, CUNY, 250 Bedford Park West, New York, NY 10468, USA
Vicente Prado-Gascó: Social Psychology Department, Faculty of Psychology, University of Valencia, Av. Blasco Ibáñez, 21, 46010 Valencia, Spain

IJERPH, 2023, vol. 20, issue 6, 1-13

Abstract: Communication in nursing is essential to the quality of care and patients’ satisfaction, and personal variables such as empathy and emotional intelligence (EI) can improve it; however, no studies have to date analyzed these competencies and their relations among nursing students compared with nurses. The aims of this study are, therefore, to analyze the differences between nursing students and nurses in the means for empathy, EI and attitudes towards communication in order to assess the impact of empathy and EI on nurses’ and nursing students’ attitudes towards communication, and their influence on the behavioral dimension of attitude. A cross-sectional descriptive study was performed on a convenience sample of 961 nursing students and 460 nurses from the Valencian Community, Spain. T-test and hierarchical regression models (HRM) were used. The data was collected in the selected universities in the 2018/2019 academic year. The results showed high levels in all the variables analyzed (i.e., empathy, EI, and attitudes towards communication) in both samples. The HRM results suggested that empathy was a better predictor than EI of the attitudes towards patient communication among both the nursing students and nurses. In the behavioral dimension of the attitude, the cognitive and affective dimensions had greater weight than the emotional component (i.e., empathy and EI). Developing empathy and the cognitive dimension of the attitude in nursing students and nurses could, therefore, help improve EI and attitudes towards communication. These findings are important for developing intervention programs adjusted to real needs.

Keywords: attitude; communication; cross-sectional; empathy; emotional intelligence; nurses; nursing students (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
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