Emotional intelligence (EI) and its significance to nursing have been increasingly emphasized
throughout the last few years. Emotional intelligence is composed of a deposit of interrelated skills
involving a capability to appraise one's own emotions, and those of others, utilization ®ulation of
own emotions, social skills, and optimism. Empathy also has been described as a necessary element of
the nurse- patient relationship and its link to emotional intelligence has been reported. Accordingly,
EI training skills can be incorporated into educational training intervention to promote these skills.
Objective: Investigate the effect of emotional intelligence educational training intervention on levels of
emotional intelligence and empathy among nursing students of Damanhour University. Setting:
Fourth year nursing students, Faculty of Nursing, Damanhour University. Subjects: Twenty nine
students enrolled in Psychiatric and Mental Health Nursing course, and a matched group of twenty
nine students enrolled in the Community Health Nursing course. Tools: Three tools were used for data
collection 1) Socio-demographic and academic data tool 2) Jefferson Scale of Empathy (JSPE) 3)
Emotional Intelligence Scale. Results: The present study findings showed that empathy& emotional
intelligence improved over a four weeks period after introducing training intervention for the study
subjects. Conclusion: Emotional Intelligence training has can improve students' empathy, appraisal
of students own emotion and regulation and utilization of emotions. Recommendations: Emotional
Intelligence courses should be held in curriculum of nursing for students and nursing staff to improve
their empathic talents and emotional intelligence.