Emotional competence profile of nurses in prison settings

Abstract

The experience of caring for the inmate population is developed in an environment with specific characteristics, where nurses have ambivalent feelings that they need to be able to manage. This management requires the development of a set of skills and resources related to Emotional Competence. The general objective of this study was to identify the Emotional Competence profile of Prison Nurses and the specific objectives were: to present the sociodemographic variables of the sample of Prison Nurses and to identify the association between sociodemographic and professional variables and the Emotional Competence profile of Prison Nurses. This is a quantitative, descriptive and analytical study. The inclusion criteria were nurses working at the moment in the Prison Facilities of Porto, Santa Cruz do Bispo and Paços de Ferreira. The data collection instrument of the study was a questionnaire divided into two parts. The first part was composed of questions about sociodemographic and professional variables and the second part was composed of the “Veiga CE Scale” (Veiga-Branco, 1999). The sample of this study was composed of 17 nurses, most of them being female (52.9%). The vast majority of nurses worked at the prison of Porto (76.5%). It was found a relationship between the sociodemographic variable marital status and the Self-motivation dimension. The variable average daily contact time with inmates also showed statistically significant differences in the Self-awareness, Self-motivation and Global Emotional Competence dimensions. Job satisfaction also showed statistically significant differences in all dependent variables, except for Self-motivation and Empathy. With regard to the determinants of Emotional Competence, it was confirmed that all dimensions are predictive of it and that nurses have moderate levels of emotional competence in its five dimensions and overall. The dimension “Self-awareness” shows a high level of Emotional Competence.