From Emotional Intelligence to Emotional Wisdom: Exploring Stories of Emotional Growth in the Lifeworlds of Student Nurses: a Qualitative Study

Reframing Emotional Intelligence as Emotional Wisdom
This research has investigated the motif of emotional wisdom (EW) within a group of female nursing students in one United Kingdom (UK) University, through my perspective as a nurse educator. The provision of effective quality nursing care according to the DOH, (2012) Compassion in Practice policy document identified six fundamental values of nursing: care, compassion, competence, communication, courage and commitment. Nursing practice is predicated on the presence of nurse education that is directed towards developing a safe and competent practitioner. Henderson (2001) and De Lambert (1998) have stated that nursing practice cannot be separated from the affective state of the nurse carrying out nursing care. The nursing literature suggests that EI has a role to play in nurse education, (Cadman & Brewer, 2001, McQueen, 2004, Freshwater & Stickley 2004), a role that is possibly underplayed. Using a qualitative research methodology grounded on a partnership based heuristic, [which is an adaptation of Moutakas’s (1990) methodology]; the study seeks to understand the lived experience of emotional intelligence (EI) of both myself as a nurse educator and those of nursing students. It suggests that a more meaningful way to apply EI within the context of learning and developing as nurses is as emotional wisdom (EW).
Aim: to explore the lived experience of EI amongst a group of student nurses
Method: a qualitative exploration drawing on Moustakas (1990), which holds the experiences of myself as the researcher, alongside the experiences of a group of nursing students as central to understanding what it is like to be an emotionally intelligent nurse.
Findings: the data analysis uncovered four main themes relating to the lived experience of EI among us as a research group:
Confronting the Nemesis of Kinsfolk Legacy. This focused on the impact of past emotional events in the development of the study participant in shaping her current emotionally intelligent identity
Apprehending the Affective Learning Spaces. This theme explored the learning of emotions and emotional management of self and patients within the ‘classroom’ and the clinical setting pointing to a learning gap between those domains, which was rooted in a lack of emotional preparedness in the university.
Authenticity of Being: Occupying Two Worlds. This explored the two domains in which the neophyte nurse found herself coming to an understanding and negotiated role clarity as to whom she was whilst learning as a nurse student and who she was as a daughter, mother, partner.
Being Fully Present. This theme explored the data around the experience of learning to be emotionally attuned, or attentive to the patient.
These findings are discussed within a creative synthesis and a summary of learning from the study. This seeks to proffer a potential model through which emotionally wise learning might be mediated within nurse education to future nursing students. In presenting such however, I am also offering up these findings with an invitation to you as the reader to determine if your own experiences find resonance with these accounts.
Possible implications of the study within the field of nurse education:
 Discussion concerning the use of EI measures as an additional recruitment marker to nurse education programmes
 A pedagogical approach to nurse education predicated on an EW curricula
 Recognition of an ontological oriented curricula in nurse education as a means to enhancing self-awareness