Читать книгу The Nursing Associate's Handbook of Clinical Skills - Группа авторов - Страница 148

Emotional intelligence is defined as the ‘ability to recognise the meaning of emotions and their relationships and to use them as a basis of reasoning and problem‐solving’ (Mayer et al. 2001, p. 234).

Mayer & Salovey (1997) believed that emotional intelligence is related to thinking, through the ability to use reasoning, by way of information, to find meaning. This model is composed of four branches (see Table 6.1). Each branch has specific characteristics to meet the criteria of emotional intelligence. Each level or branch builds upon the previous one, and awareness of what each branch offers is individual. Enhancing relationships with others is a key component of healthy emotional interactions. The following is a brief description of the four branches. The first branch is the perception of emotion, which is the skill of accurately distinguishing emotion within oneself and others. Using emotion to facilitate thinking is the second branch. This branch enhances an individual’s ability to assimilate emotion to facilitate thinking and to prioritise thinking and judgements.

Understanding emotion follows as the third branch, which allows application of the emotional knowledge gained in the first two levels of skills to translate emotions to meaning within the context of events. The highest level of the skills of emotional intelligence is the conscious regulation and management of emotion. This level of the model allows the nursing associate to remain receptive to emotional information while reflecting on the usefulness of it. This reflective skill provides the ability to evaluate emotional reactions not only within self but also those conveyed by others.