Relationship between emotional intelligence and aggression among nursing students in a tertiary institute

Background: Working with emotions is an important aspect of the nurse–patient relationship: the nurse will better manage his/her own emotions, and will also influence patient's emotions on investigations, treatments, fears, vision about disease, etc., Aggression is one of the important factors that significantly affect the performance of an individual. Aim: The aim of this study was to identify the level of emotional intelligence (EI) and aggression among nursing students and to assess its correlations with sociodemographic variables. Materials and Methods: A cross sectional study was done among 242 nursing students of various nursing colleges of Sri Ganganagar, Rajasthan. Data collection was done using two questionnaires one for emotional intelligence and another for aggression level. The results were determined using the mean, standard deviation, T test and Pearson's correlation coefficient with level of significance was set at P < 0.05. Results: There is a nonsignificant negative relationship of verbal aggression (r = −0.0192) with EI. Higher aggression was seen in male participants in the age group of 18–21 years and in the 1st year of nursing students (P ≤ 0.01). Conclusion: Males were more aggressive whereas females were found to be more emotionally intelligent in the current study.