Emotional intelligence profiles of nurses caring for people with severe behaviour problems

This paper reports on a two-year longitudinal study on the emotional intelligence profiles of 380 nurses caring for clients with highly frequent and extremely severe behaviour problems. The aim was to identify emotional intelligence cluster types for those nurses reporting the fewest symptoms of burnout, the least absenteeism due to illness, and the least job turnover. A repeated measures ANOVA was undertaken using a 0.05 level of significance. The fewest symptoms of burnout were reported by female nurses with relatively high emotional intelligence profiles and relatively low social skills. Males with higher problem-solving and stress-tolerance skills also showed less burnout. No specific cluster types with a significant relation to absenteeism due to illness or job turnover could be identified. (C) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.