Background: Emotional Intelligence (EI), previous caring experience and mindfulness training may have a
positive impact on nurse education. More evidence is needed to support the use of these variables in nurse
recruitment and retention.
Objective: To explore the relationship between EI, gender, age, programme of study, previous caring experience
and mindfulness training.
Design: Cross sectional element of longitudinal study.
Setting and participants: 938 year one nursing, midwifery and computing students at two Scottish Higher Education
Institutes (HEIs) who entered their programme in September 2013.
Data: Participants completed a measure of ‘trait’ EI: Trait Emotional Intelligence Questionnaire Short Form
(TEIQue-SF); and ‘ability’ EI: Schutte's et al. (1998) Emotional Intelligence Scale (SEIS). Demographics, previous caring experience and previous training in mindfulness were recorded.
Methods: Relationships between variables were tested using non-parametric tests.
Results: Emotional intelligence increased with age on both measures of EI [TEIQ-SF H(5)= 15.157 p= 0.001; SEIS
H(5)= 11.388, p= 0.044]. Females (n=786) scored higher than males (n= 149) on both measures [TEIQ-SF,
U= 44,931, z=−4.509, p b .001; SEIS, U= 44,744, z=−5.563, p b .001]. Nursing students scored higher that
computing students [TEIQ-SF H(5)= 46,496, p b .001; SEIS H(5)= 33.309, p b 0.001. There were no statistically
significant differences in TEIQ-SF scores between those who had previous mindfulness training (n=50) and those who had not (n=857) [U= 22,980, z= 0.864, p=0.388]. However, median SEIS was statistically significantly
different according to mindfulness training [U = 25,115.5, z = 2.05, p = .039]. Neither measure demonstrated
statistically significantly differences between those with (n = 492) and without (n = 479) previous caring
experience, [TEIQ-SF, U = 112, 102, z = 0.938, p= .348; SEIS, U = 115,194.5, z = 1.863, p = 0.063].
Conclusions: Previous caring experience was not associated with higheremotional intelligence.Mindfulness training was associated with higher ‘ability’ emotional intelligence. Implications for recruitment, retention and further research are explored.