Eman Nabil Ramadan¹, Sahar Abdel-Latif Abdel-Sattar², Aziza M.Abozeid³, Hanan Abd Elwahab El Sayed^1,

Background: Nursing profession and community health nursing practice needs the understanding of a lot of emotional perception, social skills or capability to manage self-emotions and emotion of others to convey the caring attribute. It is the hardest and most emotionally drained profession which requires high degree of emotional intelligence (EI) that can be developed. This study aims to evaluate the effect of emotional intelligence program on nursing students’ clinical performance during community health nursing practical training. Methods: A quasi-experimental design was used. This study conducted at the nursing faculty, Benha University. A convenience sample (100) students who were recorded at community health nursing course were included in this present study. Three tools were used for collection of data: first; structured interviewing schedule for collecting data about demographic characteristics and knowledge of the subjects toward emotional intelligence. Second; The Schutte Self-Report Emotional Intelligence Test, it was comprised of 33-items.Third; the six dimension scale of nursing performance (6-DSNP) to evaluate the students’ clinical performance. Results: There were statistically significant progresses (P= 0.000) toward nursing students’ emotional intelligence & knowledge and their clinical performance after the program as compared to before program. A positive significant correlation (P< 0.05) between total studied students' scores of EI and all subscales of 6-DSNP before and after the program, also, there was a significant relation (P< 0.05) between studied students' total scores of EI & gender of students before and after the program. In contrast, no significant relation (P > 0.05) was observed between total scores of 6-DSNP& students' total scores of EI and their socio demographic characteristics. Conclusion: The emotional intelligence program was efficient in improving emotional intelligence of nursing students and their clinical performance through practical training of community health nursing after the program. Recommendation: Teaching courses and sessions about EI should be done for the community health nursing students to develop students’ EI and the topic of EI should be included as a basic section in the community health nursing program for undergraduate and graduate nursing curriculum.

emotional intelligence, program, clinical performance, nursing students, practical training