Introduction: Decreasing stressors in critical occupations such as operating room staff is quite valuable. Therefore, by identifying the level of emotional intelligence and coping styles of the operating room staff, these factors can be managed and controlled. The current study aimed at determining the level of emotional intelligence and its relationship to coping-with-stress styles among technologists in operating rooms of educational hospitals affiliated to Iran University of Medical Sciences in the academic year 2015-2016.
Methods: The current descriptive-analytic study was conducted on 200 operating room technologists. The instruments employed in the study were questionnaires of demographic information, emotional intelligence by Bradberry and Greaves, and coping-with-stress styles by Endler and Parker. Data analysis was conducted with SPSS version 19.
Results: Based on the result of the current study,71.5% of operating room technologists had moderate emotional intelligence, their dominant style was the problem-oriented style, and there was a significant correlation between emotional intelligence and coping styles (P < 0.001); individuals with a problem-oriented style had higher emotional intelligence. Also, there was a significant relationship between emotional intelligence and gender (P < 0.001) as well as education (P = 0.034); therefore, males had higher emotional intelligence than females and emotional intelligence in subjects with bachelor’s degree was more than that of the subjects with associate degree.
Conclusions: Emotional intelligence of most of the technologists in operating room was at the moderate level and the dominant style was the problem-oriented. Since emotional intelligence skills and the type of coping styles can be developed through education, it is recommended that educational classes and workshops be held periodically to improve the level of emotional intelligence and selecting the suitable type of coping style by technologists in operating room.