Emotional Intelligence, Pain Knowledge, and Pain Attitudes of Nursing Students

Effective pain assessment is a primary concern for nurses, who begin learning about pain as students. Pain knowledge and emotional intelligence may increase effectiveness of nurses’ pain assessments. Few studies have examined the relationship between emotional intelligence and pain knowledge and attitudes in nursing students. This non-experimental, correlational study addresses this research gap by examining associations between emotional intelligence and the pain knowledge and attitudes in nursing students. The study is guided by the Emotional Intelligence Theory and uses convenience sampling of sophomore (year one) and senior (year three) level undergraduate students. The Knowledge and Attitudes Survey Regarding Pain (KASRP) and The Schutte Self Report Emotional Intelligence Test (SSEIT) measure pain knowledge/attitudes and emotional intelligence and are analyzed with independent t-tests. A total of 54 nursing students (26 year one students and 28 year three students) completed the questionnaire. Year three students had higher emotional intelligence scores (M = 125.39, SD = 8.71) than year one students (M = 124.69, SD = 11.76), but the year could not be significantly correlated to the level of Emotional Intelligence (t = .257, p = .798). Year three students also scored higher on the KASRP test (M = 27.52, SD = 2.3) than year one students (M = 25.9, SD = 3.05), and this was found to be a significant correlation (t = 2.26, p = .028). These results differ from earlier iterations of this study and the implications of those differences are discussed