American Research Journal of Nursing

Background- Emotional Intelligence provides an important assistance to efficient leadership and it has become one of essential leaders’ competencies. Nurses are the closest member of healthcare system to the patient. Empowering them means enhancement of quality of patients’ care and advancement of patient safety Aim: To investigate the relationship between head nurses’ emotional intelligence and staff nurses’ empowerment. Method- It is Descriptive correlational study. The study was conducted in Prince Mohamad Bin Abdul Aziz Hospital in Riyadh City affiliated to Saudi Ministry of health. Subjects composed of two groups. First group: head nurses: All available head nurses (N= 36) were included. Second group was staff nurses (N =270), selected randomly. Two tools were used to collect the study data. Tool I: Emotional Intelligence Questionnaire Format and tool II Staff Nurses’ Empowerment Questionnaire Format. Results– More than half of study sample were high emotionally intelligent (58.33%), whereas only (5.56%) were low emotionally intelligent and (36.11%) of them were moderate emotionally intelligent. The total empowerment means score (25.45±8.427) where the highest mean scores of empowerment subscale were found on informal power (5.12±2.022) then opportunity (4.27±1.553). Global measure of empowerment was the lowest mean score (2.54±1.312). Less than half of study subjects were moderately empowered (43%) while (32.6%) of them were low empowered and only slightly less than one quarter (24.4%) were highly empowered. Finally, weak non-significant correlations between Head nurses’ emotional Intelligence and staff nurses’ perceived empowerment. Conclusion- More than half of study sample were high emotionally intelligent and only (5.56%) were low emotionally intelligent and more than third of them were moderate. less than half of study subjects were moderately empowered ,while about one third of them were low empowered and only slightly less than one quarter were highly empowered. Finally, weak non-significant correlations between Head nurses’ emotional Intelligence and staff nurses’ perceived empowerment. Recommendation: Provide training programs for staff nurses and head nurses about empowerment. Involve emotional intelligence competencies in head nurses’ performance appraisal. Develop curricular based competencies for emotional intelligence and empowerment both in under and postgraduate programs. Further research to examine the effect of shared governance on nurses ‘empowerment.