Head Nurses’ Emotional Intelligence Contribution to Staff Nurses’ Work Engagement

: Background : Emotional Intelligence provides an essential assistance and become one of necessary head nurses' competencies. The head nurses use of control over emotions benefit staff nurse by creating a convenient and healthy environment for their work engagement. Aim: Assess head nurses’ emotional intelligence contribution to staff nurses’ work engagement. Subjects and Method: A descriptive correlation research study design was used in this study. It was conducted in all departments at El-Menshawy General Hospital affiliated to the Ministry of Health and Population. Subject: Two groups of subjects’ (a) All (n=60) head nurses (b) Stratified random sampling (n=400) of staff nurses Tools: two tools were used for collecting data (1) Head nurses’ emotional intelligence assessment scale (2) Staff nurses engagement questionnaire. Results: Head nurses 76% had high level of overall emotional intelligence. Head nurses 85%, 83%, 81.7% and 80% respectively had high level in emotional self-control, emotional management of others, emotional self-management and emotional awareness of others. Staff nurses 84.8% had high level of overall work engagement. Staff nurses range (75.5%- 77.3% ) had high level of emotional, physical, cognitive and behavioral engagement respectively. There was a statistically significant positive correlation between head nurses overall emotional intelligence and staff nurses overall work engagement. Conclusion : there was contribution of head nurses' emotional intelligence to staff nurses' work engagement. Recommendation : Periodical training programs needed for head nurses and staff nurses about emotional intelligence and work engagement. Add emotional intelligence's competencies and work engagement in undergraduate and postgraduate nursing educational programs.


Introduction
Hospitals required offering safe, dependable, and high-quality patient care to the communities they serve.Despite the environmental challenges which include declining reimbursements, rising expenditures, and regulatory requirements. (1,2)These challenges are complex and require emotionally intelligent leaders who are seen as reliable and aware of behavioral and social norms. (3)There is evidence that emotionally intelligent head nurses can help their hospitals create a competitive advantage through improving top talent retention, intraprofessional team-work, time and resources management, as well as increase motivation, innovation, and establish trust among staff nurses. (4)ead nurses with high emotional intelligence can recognize the professional and personal well-being of staff nurses and showing an appreciation for their contributions.They can also cultivate healthy environment that promote learning, information sharing, and decision making. (5)Beside they motivate staff nurses to accomplish their tasks efficiently and increase their job engagement (6) .Emotionally intelligence head nurses have the ability to manage impulses to delay gratification, regulate their emotions, stay motivated and empathize with staff nurses when faced with frustrating situations. (7)he components of emotional intelligent are emotional selfawareness, emotional expression, emotional awareness of others, emotional reasoning, emotional selfmanagement, emotional management of staff nurses, and social skill. (8)The head nurses emotional self-awareness represents that they are aware about effect of their emotions on their thoughts and behaviors at work.Emotional expression measures the head nurses frequency of express their emotion in an appropriate way at work. (9)Emotional awareness of others focuses on being aware of staff nurses emotional expressions both verbal and nonverbal.Head nurses emotional reasoning represent the frequency to integrates information that is emotionally relevant when making decisions and solving problems at work.Emotional self-management refers to the head nurses relative frequency to successfully control their emotions at work.The emotional management of others represents the ability to skillfully control the emotions of staff nurses, this involves creating a positive working environment for them.The emotional self-control describes the capacity of head nurse to handle powerful emotions at work. (10)Social skills represent effectively managing feelings with respect staff nurse relationships; capable of interpreting social cues; and able to engage in social interactions to influence, convince, negotiate, and guide staff nurses. (11)he contribution of head nurses emotional intelligence and the issues related to nurses engagement, retention, and satisfaction considered to be important for staff nurses in many diverse health care organizations. (12)hile staff nurses engagement in health care has emerged as a critical strategy for improving the health care quality due to its positive impact on job Vol.32.No. 4 (Suppl 2) ,November 2023 performance, its negative relationship with turnover and its focus on the energy that staff nurses bring to their job. (13)Work engagement refers to a 'positive, fulfilling, work-related state of mind, positively associated with work place resources, useful achieving work goals and promote personal growth, learning and development. (14)asically staff nurses employ and express themselves physically, cognitively, emotionally, and behaviorally through role performances as a result of engagement.The physical engagement occurs when the staff nurse is willing to exert extra efforts to achieve hospital goals.Cognitive engagement represent staff nurse's involvement and dedication in performing assigned responsibilities.Emotional engagement is kind of pride and enthusiasm to work for the nurses. (15)Behavioral engagement refer to staff nurses extra role behavior of performing tasks.Thus, staff nurses with positive attitude are quickly involved in their work, and adjust to changes in the work environment showing behavioral engagement. (16)ignificant of the study The vision 2030 in Egypt focuses on enabling and supporting nursing profession to progress greatly in terms of education and clinical practice.Head nurses with great emotional intelligence will build positive relationships with staff nurses and manage their emotions.While staff nurses need to perceive their head nurses are concerned to their staffing needs, value their advancement and invest enough in their training.As well as play vital role in their overall performance and engagement (17)

Tools
To achieve the aim of study, the following tools were used.Tool I: Head nurses' Emotional Intelligence Assessment Scale This tool was developed by the researcher guided by (18) and related literatures (19) , it includes two parts:

Discussion
Head nurses' emotional intelligence is amongst of work demands, which may possibly engage staff nurses in their work (22)   .It also has influences on well-being, workplace stress of nurses and on considering factors relevant to organizational efficiency.So, the present study was aimed to assess head nurses emotional intelligence effect on staff nurses work engagement at El-Menshawy General Hospital.Finding of current study showed that majority of head nurses had high level of overall emotional intelligence significantly positively related with their age, qualification and years of experience.Actually their personal characteristics as highly educated married females around middle age and have been head nurses since twenty years give them wisdom.Specially they have years of leadership and relation management which enhanced them to act in their own interests.Really those head nurses personal characteristics helped them to have high level of social awareness and communication skill to exercise their rights without anxiety and to maintain balance of their behaviors with staff nurses.Also majority of those head nurses had high overall levels and mean scores for each emotional intelligence subscale including emotional self-awareness, expression, awareness of others, reasoning, self-management, management of others, self-control and social skills.Most probably those head nurses get opportunities for training and development, supportive work environment and empowerment from their hospital administrations.Beside the nursing profession itself requires good relation with their staff nurses without conflict interaction with patient and their Vol.32.No. 4 (Suppl 2) ,November 2023 family and with other health care personnel.This result is supported by (23) study correlation between emotional intelligence and leadership style among nurse mangers.They found that nurse managers are associated with high level of emotional intelligence and good leadership competencies.On contrary (24) study the relationship between selfesteem and emotional intelligence among nursing managers at Sohag and Damanhour University Hospitals.They didn't support this result and found that the highest percentages of the study sample were at low emotional intelligence.Present study staff nurses showed high level of overall work engagement.Really this result due to their high level of physical, cognitive, emotional and behavioral engagement.As well as related to their head nurses emotional intelligence.Those staff nurses had high level of physical engagement may be due to their experiencing full concentration at work, feeling happy and engrossed in work so that time seems to pass quickly.Those staff nurses reported experiencing a sense of significance, enthusiasm, pride and challenge.Actually they can stay for long hours until the task are done without any stress.Also they exert lot of efforts and work too hard to perform their job with enthusiasm.They said that they always have great deal of stamina and lot of energy for their work.Beside the nursing of patients and its mercy gave them feeling of satisfaction.Result of present study confirmed by (25) study about the effect of inclusive leadership on nurses' work engagement.They found the highest percentage of nurses had a high work engagement level.Also, (26) study the relationship between nurses' job crafting behaviors and their work engagement among hospital nurses in Saudi Arabia.They found the participating nurses had high levels of work engagement Head nurses had high level of emotional intelligence positively highly correlated with staff nurses work engagement.Staff nurses in present study had high level of work engagement, which highly correlated to head nurses high level of emotional intelligence.Really head nurses understanding one's own and their staff nurses emotions.The use and control over emotions benefit staff nurse and creating a healthy and convenient environment for work engagement.Yet head nurses' high emotional intelligence increased the personal resources of staff nurses to increase their work engagement.While staff nurses tend to engage in their work because their head nurses allow them the opportunity to deal with their feelings that may include loss, grief, and anxiety.Also head nurses allow them to express their feelings without judgment, pressure or guilt.So head nurses manage impulses to delay gratification, regulate their emotions, stay motivated and empathize with staff nurses when faced with frustrating situations.

Figure ( 3 )
Figure (3): Correlation between head nurses' emotional intelligence and staff nurses work engagement

Table ( 1):Head nurses' personal characteristics (n=60)
Shows levels of staff nurses overall work engagement.The majority of staff nurses had high level of work engagement as total and no one of staff nurses had low level.

Table ( 6 ): Relation between staff nurses' characteristics and their overall work engagement levels
*: Statistically significant at p ≤ 0.05 p: p value for comparing between Relation between staff nurses' characteristics and their work engagement Personal characteristics including age, years of experience, marital status and qualification significantly affected both overall head nurses emotional intelligence and staff nurses work engagement.Also head nurses' emotional intelligence significantly contributed to staff nurses' work engagement.As majority of head Vol.32.No. 4 (Suppl 2) ,November 2023 nurses had high level of overall emotional intelligence and majority of staff nurses had high level of overall work engagement.