Managing the stress of medical staff has become a priority for the health sector due to the high prevalence of occupational exhaustion, partly caused by stress factors at work. Exhaustion leads to negative consequences in medical activity, including medical errors, low levels of quality of medical care and patient safety, and huge financial costs due to personnel turnover.
The aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between emotional intelligence and the perception of stressors at work among neonatologists, in order to determine whether the increase in emotional intelligence of physicians may reduce the negative consequences associated with stress.
The research sample consisted of 30 Romanian physicians specialized in neonatal intensive care (26 women, 4 men). The participants completed measures of emotional intelligence and occupational stress under the supervision of the authors of this study in a conference room.
Prior to testing the research hypotheses, we conducted a data inspection approach. All the indicators of the asymmetry of the distribution had normal values for all the study variables. We relied on linear bivariate correlation to test the research hypotheses. The findings of the study showed that stress management (a dimension of emotional intelligence) was negatively related to dissatisfaction with resources and communication (a dimension of occupational stress), r = -.41, p < .01.
The results indicate that psychological interventions to develop stress management capabilities could reduce the negative impact of lack of resources and ineffective interactions between physicians and the organization they work in.