Emotional Intelligence In Nursing Essay

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Emotional Intelligence and Reflective Practice are Integral Components of Building a Therapeutic Relationship in Nursing. Emotional Intelligence, also known as ‘EI’, is defined as the ability to recognize, authoritize and evaluate emotions. The ability to control and express our own emotions is very important but so is our ability to understand, interpret and respond to the emotions of others. To be emotionally intelligent one must be able to perceive emotions, reason with emotions, understand emotions and manage emotions. Firstly, perceiving emotions or identifying certain emotions is the first step in becoming emotionally intelligent. Nurses can identify people’s emotions by their behavior, facial expression, mood and the way that they speak. .Secondly, to reason with emotions, nurses will need to think critically on how they are going to help their clients come to terms with their emotions. Reasoning with emotions helps the client to prioritize and pay attention to what is important and what is not. Thirdly, understanding emotions can be explained and shown in a lot of different ways. It is important for nurses to be able to understand their client’s feelings as this will help create a therapeutic environment thus enabling the nurse to help their clients and lastly,managing emotions is the main key to being emotionally intelligent. The ability to feel and respond to your emotions accordingly and the emotions of others are the all important elements to being emotionally intelligent. Nurses are advised to be emotionally intelligent because it improves their work performance by helping them balance their personal and professional life, it improves their physical and mental health by lowering their stress and disease levels and mos... ... middle of paper ... ... properly interact and communicate well with their clients, they need to be emotionally intelligent, self aware, create a therapeutic relationship and develop reflective practices. All of the above contributes to an individual’s health and so it’s very important that we are able to control our emotions, correct and learn from our mistakes, examine and balance our life and create a therapeutic environment so that our clients feel comfortable, safe and trust us enough to live their life in our hands. Reference www.belfastmet.ac.uk/goal/resources/reflectivepractices.page 60 www.cno.org-collegeofontario. Revised 2006. Middleton, J. (2004). A Practical To Promote Reflective Practice Within Nursing .Retrieved March 31, 2004 from www.nursingtimes.net. Bradley,J.B.,&Edinberg,M.E.(1986).Communication in the Nursing Context (2nd Edition). East Norwalk, Connecticut.

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