A conceptual analysis of personality traits, emotional intelligence and customer-oriented behaviour among Malaysian nursing students

Abstract

Recently, healthcare sector is facing increasing challenges and growing expectations from the patients. Ministry of Health Malaysia received increasing number of complaints for public hospitals on unsatisfied service quality which involved nursing services. Satisfaction with nursing services has been reported to contribute more significantly than any other service to overall perceptions of healthcare service quality. Researchers reported the new generation of nursing graduates were being criticized for their dissatisfactory attitudes towards patients and deterioration in the standard service delivery performance which has been identified as the contributing factors to the increasing number of complaints and criticisms on nurses. Customer-oriented behaviour has been validated as an essential approach to achieve higher quality of care and improving patients’ satisfaction with the healthcare service delivered. Owing to that fact, this paper aims to impart a conceptual analysis of the mediating effects of emotional intelligence on the relationship between big five personality traits and customer-oriented behaviour among Malaysian nursing students. This paper is guided by trait theory and emotional intelligence theory in establishing the proposed theoretical framework. Our conceptual analysis suggests that emotional intelligence significantly mediates the relationship between big five personality traits and customer-oriented behaviour. In addition, this study provides an avenue to researchers to examine nursing students’ customer-oriented behaviour level and its relationship with big five personality traits and emotional intelligence. It also offers a beneficial guideline for Student Recruitment Department of nursing colleges to enrol the best candidates with the right personality traits into the nursing program and lead towards the sustainability of nursing care quality deliver by the future nurses.