INTRODUCTION:

Emotion is a multi-faceted psychosomatic state involving three distinct facets: a subjective experience, a physiological response, and a behavioral or expressive response. The subjective experience does not take into account background or culture, while the physiological responses are the creation of sympathetic or parasympathetic nervous system.

The behavioral response is imperative as an individual spends a considerable time in interpreting the emotional expressions of the people around him/her.

As per the WHO, individuals between the age group of 10- 19 years are adolescents and those between 19-24 years are youths. During their transformational age from adolescents to adults there is a rapid physical and emotional change in them. They are in a transition phase from a dependent childhood to psychological, social and economic independent adulthood. Therefore, it is the most challenging and complicated stage in the ladder of growth and development. This age is often marked by struggle in social and emotional development. When these youths face lot of stress from emotional-social changes and cognitive development, it may affect their mental health. The reasons for emotional problems can be due to several factors such as faulty parenting, single parenting, and family disharmony, lack of care, strict obedience at home and fear of failure. The development of a youth’s character and individuality is dependent to a great extent on his/her emotional life. During this phase, they are required to develop personal values and sense of identity to fulfill new role and responsibilities with the peer group, complete the requirements of higher secondary education course and make decisions regarding their career. In this stage, intelligence more or less attains its highest limit.When young students seek admission for nursing course have the opportunity of receiving nursing education, they primarily feel pleasure and joy, but these positive emotions are usually accompanied by problems like leaving the family, going in another city for studying, making new friends, being in a new environment, homesickness, economic problems, adjusting to every new situation as well as anxiety of profession. The social, cultural and emotional changes may affect the young nursing student and have an emotional impact.⁹

Emotional competence is a learned capability that leads an individual to outstanding performance at work and indicates the degree to which his potential is being translated into on-the-job capabilities. According to Dr. Dalip Singh (2003), Emotional Competency means the capacity to tactfully respond to emotional stimuli elicited by various situations; having high self-esteem and optimism; communication skills; ability to tackle emotional upsets at any point of time. These young nursing students are going through lot of emotional, cognitive, and social challenges. These students sometimes face emotional problems such as a variety of role expectations and self-concept. The instability of emotions is very strong which leads to fear, lack of confidence, low self-esteem, social withdrawal, anxiety and peer group relationships, which significantly influence the emotional development of the individual. Since they go through emotional development and they have strong driving force to go through the emotional change, they need to be channelized in an accurate way.

NEED OF THE STUDY:

The core of nursing is "caring", and when care is provided to the patient it involves emotions. To care for someone requires understanding of emotions of self and others. The role of a nurse in today’s world hinges upon physical, mental, social and emotional health needs of patients, their families and the community. When the patient is sick it affects emotionally, the changed physiological parameters also pulls him down and decreases his emotional strength. This kind of emotional drain not only affects the patient but also affects the family members. At this time, emotions play a very important role in driving positive or negative feelings. In such conditions, if nurses care for patients by applying their knowledge, skills, attitude, communication and soft skills, it makes a difference in the delivery of health care to the patients. During such situations, nursing students posted in clinical areas are not trained to understand the emotional conditions; rather they see and understand on their own.

To the researcher’s knowledge, there are several tools to assess emotional competence, but on admission and later in their baccalaureate program it is never assessed. So the students are not identified with either high or low emotional competence. The nursing curriculum is based on the cognitive, affective and psychomotor domain. All the teaching is focused on cognitive and technical skills, but no teaching is done on emotional aspects although it is expected in clinical evaluation. So in this high-tech, high touch approach students should be educated on emotional intelligence as this is the need of today. The nursing students of present generation have become techno-savvy and they seek every information from internet. The researcher felt that the first year theory and clinical experience would mould the students and help them to adapt through the various emotional reactions. So, the researcher felt the need of assessing the emotional competence among second year B.Sc Nursing students.

PROBLEM STATEMENT:

A study to assess the Emotional competence among nursing students of selected nursing colleges in Maharashtra.

OBJECTIVES:

To assess the emotional competence among nursing students

REVIEW OF LITERATURE:

Kuruvilla J and Menezes P (2019) investigated the effect of emotional intelligence training program on emotional intelligence and emotional competence among graduate nursing students. The pretest mean scores of emotional competence was 166 and post test mean scores were 185. This indicated that the emotional intelligence training program improved the emotional competence of nursing students.

Habib U, Habib O, Ansari S (2016) identified emotional competence in male and female adolescents of Jammu and Kashmir. The researchers included 100 adolescent males and females from two Senior Secondary Schools of District Baramulla, Kashmir. To assess the emotional competence of adolescents Dr. Kumar and Paiva Emotional competence assessment scale (ECAS) was used. The result revealed that the emotional competence significantly differ from male and female adolescents. Female dimensions scored significantly higher than males in happiness, love and interest. Male and female emotional competency dimension do not differ in anger, sadness and jealousy, but they differ in the dimension of happiness, love, interest and sympathy.

Masrat R, Wani A M, Alam S (2015) investigated the influence of emotional competence on well-being of adolescents. The study was conducted on 100 adolescents in which 50 were male and female in each group by using simple random sampling method. The tools used for data collection was Emotional competence Scale by J. S. Fulton Paiva and Dr. Suresh Kumar (2009) and scale of wellbeing was developed by Jagsharanbir Singh and Dr. Asha Gupta (2001). The linear regression analysis result showed that emotional competence was a significant predictor of well-being of adolescents as R=.899. It also showed that there was a significant positive correlation between emotional competence and well being in terms of mental, social and spiritual well-being of male adolescents. In female adolescents positive correlation was found between emotional competence and physical well being.

Avalosse M. et al, (2015) identified the relationship between emotional competence and well known health indicators such as age, sex, body mass index, education level and health behavior such as diet, physical activity, smoking and drinking habits. The study was done in collaboration with largest mutual Benefit society in Belgium among 1,310 participants. The result showed that emotional competence is significantly positive predictor for health. The findings of the study also show that emotional competence impact of other risk factors.

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY:

Research methodology: Research Approach was quantitative approach; Research Design was descriptive; Target Population – Second Year B.Sc. Nursing students; Sampling techniques – stratified proportionate sampling; Sample –Second Year B. Sc Nursing students from selected colleges of Maharashtra who fulfil the inclusion criteria. Sample size – 250 students; Inclusion Criteria – Student nurses willing to participate in the study. Exclusion criteria – Nursing students who are mentally ill and receiving treatment as evidenced by records.

Emotional competence tool constructed and standardized by M Suresh Kumar (2012) The tool consists of 35 items assessing eight dimensions of emotional competence namely happiness, love, interest, sympathy, fear, anger, sad, jealousy. The points on the scale are assigned arbitrary weights. The tool was validated by expert committee of Mahatma Gandhi Memorial Institutes of health Sciences, Navi Mumbai. The experts agreed that the items in the scale provided adequate coverage of the concept. As the tool was standardized and appropriate for the study the investigator had taken permission from the owner of the tool through email. It is Likert scale based on four responses namely always (3), sometimes (2), rarely (1) and never (0). The scoring key denoted low = upto 38, average = 39-76, high = >76. Emotional Competence Assessment Scale (ECAS): As the tool is standardized the reliability co-efficient of correlation between is 0.712, equal-length Spearman-Brown is 0.721, Guttmann Split-half is 0.719 and unequal-length Spearman-Brown is 0.719.

RESULTS:

Demographic profile of nursing students

Table 1: Distribution of demographic profile of nursing student n=250

Demographic data		f	%
Age (years)	17-18	71	28.4
	19-20	174	69.6
	>21	5	2
Gender	Male	30	12
Gender	Female	220	88
Income (Parents)	<20,000	111	44.4
	20,001-40000	73	29.2
	>40001	66	26.4

Majority of nursing students were in the age group of 19-20 years. The study population consisted of more female students than male students. The income of parents 44.4% of parents had income less than 20,000 and 29% of the population was between 20,001- 40,000.

Table 2: Distribution of nursing students based on Emotional competence. n=250

Emotional competency
Average (39-76)		High (>76)
F	%	f	%
105	42	145	58

The emotional competence was found to be average among 42% nursing students, while more than 50% of students had high emotional competence. None of them were found in low (upto 38) emotional competence.

Graph 1: Distribution of emotional competence among nursing students

The above graph shows that more than 80% students had high emotional competence in love, also the 80% of students are sad and 74% show emotional competence in interest. The lowest emotional competence is observed in anger i.e 65.6%

Table 3: Dimension wise mean score of emotional competence among nursing students n=250

Dimension of emotional competence	Mean	SD
Happiness	8.26	2.33
Love	10.12	1.92
Interest	8.93	2.24
Sympathy	9.62	1.88
Fear	9.84	2.86
Anger	8.18	2.39
Sad	10.52	2.71
Jealousy	10.08	3.65
Total EC score	75.55	11.87

The highest emotional competence mean score is found in the dimension of sadness 10.52±2.71 and lowest is observed in fear 8.18±2.39 among second year nursing students.

DISCUSSION:

Most of the students had average to high emotional competence. Where 42% had average emotional competence. 58% of nursing students had high emotional competence. There are eight dimensions of emotional competence assessing happiness, love, interest, sympathy, fear, anger, sad and jealousy.

Among second year Baccalaureate nursing students the highest emotional competence was observed in love i.e 84% and 80% students were sad. The students showed 70% of emotional competence in the dimension of sympathy and jealousy, whereas 74% was observed in interest.

The highest mean score was observed in dimension of sadness i.e 10.52±2.71. The lowest mean score was seen in dimension of anger, 8.18±2.3. Similar findings are seen in the study conducted by Habib U, Habib O and Ansari S (2016) assessed the emotional competence mean score in dimension of sadness was 10.93±1.55 in females and 11.03±1.73 in males, whereas in anger the mean score was 9.75±1.40 in males and in females 10.10±1.06.

The overall emotional competence mean score of nursing students was 75.55±11.876, whereas, the findings of the study conducted by Habib U, Habib O and Ansari S (2016) assessed the overall emotional competence mean score of male and female adolescents in Jammu and Kashmir was 81.59±8.55 and 93.60± 8.72.68 respectively. In another study conducted by Kuruvilla J and Menezes P (2019) found that the overall emotional competence mean score of undergraduate nursing students was 166, also the study conducted by Nithya S (2017) among software professionals observed emotional competence 31.97±2.00

CONCLUSION:

The result of the present study demonstrated that the emotional competence score is high in sadness and low in anger among second year B.Sc. Nursing students. Nursing curriculum embraces the cognitive and technical aspects, but the cognitive/affective aspects are not focused much, nor emphasized, yet it is expected to be possessed by all nurses The intervention of emotional intelligence or competence training program may improve the dimension of happiness, love, interest and sympathy and it will reduce fear, sadness and jealousy as well. Emotional competencies if achieved by these young adults it will help them to overcome all kind of emotional imbalance in personal and professional life.

IMPLICATION:

Various studies have shown positive relationship with high emotional competence. So if emotional competence is improved it may also improve dimensions of emotional competence. The training program can be used as an adjunct strategy in nursing curriculum so as to enhance the affective learning

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS:

The authors profoundly appreciate all the people who have successfully contributed in ensuring this paper in place. Their contributions are acknowledged however their names cannot be mentioned.

CONFLICT OF INTEREST:

The authors carefully declare this paper to bear not a conflict of interests

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Received on 29.06.2020 Modified on 27.09.2020

Int. J. Nur. Edu. and Research. 2021; 9(2):144-148.

DOI: 10.5958/2454-2660.2021.00036.3