Conflict management styles, emotional intelligence and implicit theories of personality of nursing students: A cross-sectional study

SummaryBackground ct management is an essential skill that nursing students need to master as conflict is unavoidable in clinical settings. Examining nursing students’ conflict management styles and the associating factors can inform nurse educators on how to equip nursing students for effective conflict management. ives tudy aimed at examining undergraduate nursing students conflict management styles in managing conflict with their supervisors in clinical placement. The associations of emotional intelligence and implicit theories of personality with conflict management styles were also investigated. s a cross-sectional quantitative survey. g tudy took place at a nursing school at a university in Hong Kong. ipants dergraduate nursing students participated in the study. s ts completed a questionnaire which consisted of demographics, Measure of Implicit Theories of Personality, The Schutte Emotional Intelligence Scale (SEIS) and The Rahim Organizational Conflict Inventory-II (ROCI-II) and received a HKD 20 book coupon as compensation. The data were analyzed by descriptive statistics, reliability analyses, t-tests, correlational and linear regression analyses. s naging conflict with clinical supervisors, students used obliging and integrating most frequently whereas used dominating least. Emotional intelligence was a significant predictor of all five conflict management styles. The higher the emotional intelligence, the more students used integrating, obliging, compromising and dominating. The lower the emotional intelligence, the more students used avoiding. There was a significant association between implicit theories of personality and compromising. The less malleable students perceived personality to be, the more they used compromising. sions nal intelligence was significantly associated with all five conflict management styles while implicit theories of personality were significantly associated with compromising style only. Efforts of nurse educators to enhance studentsʹ conflict management skills and emotional intelligence to face conflicts in clinical settings are discussed.