The development and effects of an emotional competency promotion program for nursing students: A nonequivalent control group pretest-posttest design

Purpose: The objectives of this research are to verify the development and effectiveness of a nursing student emotional competency promotion program that is important in professional nursing strategies for strengthening the psychological well-being of patients.Methods: This research was done by developing an emotional competency promotion program for nursing students according to the analysis, design, development, implementation, evaluation (ADDIE) model. Apply the program to students and evaluate their effects on their self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship management and self-efficacy using a nonequivalent control group pretest-posttest design. The subjects of this research were 48 nursing students enrolled in the department of nursing of D College; 24 students were placed in the experimental group and 24 students were in the control group. The experimental group participated in the developed program from December 18, 2017 to January 12, 2018, for a total of 8 sessions. Each session was 120 minutes long. For data collection, a pretest, posttest 1 and 2 were performed using an independent t-test and repeated measure ANOVA using SPSS/WIN 22.0.Results: The experimental group who participated in the emotional competency promotion program showed higher self awareness (F=5.65, p=.005), self management (F=11.12, p<.001), social awareness (F=5.02, p=.009), relationship management (F=11.22, p<.001) and self-efficacy (F=14.24, p<.001) than the control group. These results were supported by a statistically meaningful difference in the time period and the interaction between the time period and the two groups.Conclusion: The study’s findings indicate that the emotional competency promotion program developed through this study is effective at increasing the self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship management and self-efficacy of nursing students.