UNLOCKING THE POWER OF SPIRITUAL INTELLIGENCE: ENHANCING THE PROFESSIONAL QUALITY OF LIFE OF CRITICAL CARE NURSES IN PRIVATE HOSPITALS

Abstract

Caring for critically ill patients may have a negative impact on nurses’ professional quality of life (ProQOL), including their compassion satisfaction (CS), burnout (BO), and secondary traumatic stress (STS), leading to nurses’ turnover and concerns about the quality of care provided. Spiritual intelligence (SI) has been considered an important quality in most professions in recent years, but there is limited research on its role in contributing to the ProQOL of nurses. Therefore, it is crucial to understand the role of SI and its relationship with professional nurses’ ProQOL. This study aimed to determine the level of SI and ProQOL among critical care nurses in private hospitals. Followed by examining the relationship between SI and demographic data towards the dimension of ProQOL. A multisite study using a cross-sectional design was conducted on 136 nurses working at three private hospitals in Malaysia from March 2021 to March 2022 via an online survey. Data was gathered using the Spiritual Intelligence Self-Report Inventory (SISRI-24) and the Professional Quality of Life Version 5 (ProQOL-5), and descriptive and multivariate analyses were run using SPSS. SI among nurses was found at moderate to high levels of (61.30 ± 12.95), and the majority nurses had a moderate level of CS (72.1%), BO (77.2%), and STS (75.0%). In regression, there was a statistically significant relationship between SI toward CS (β = 0.61, t = 9.79, p < 0.01) and BO (β = -0.31, t = -4.19, p < 0.01), suggesting that CS levels were significantly higher with increasing SI levels, and BO levels significantly reduced with increasing SI levels. Also, female nurses are predicted to have a higher level of BO than male nurses (β = 0.20, t = 2.77, p = 0.01). The study’s results suggested that a holistic strategic approach is needed to improve CS and mitigate the negative component of ProQOL (BO and STS) by utilizing SI. It is hoped that nursing education institutes and hospital organizations can contribute to cultivating SI among nurses with extra consideration given to female nurses.