Social capital, social intelligence, and their relationship among ICU and CCU nurses

Abstract Background The social capital of nurses is one of the main factors which affect the performance of nurses and the quality of care. Assessing the relationship between social capital and its related factors is one of the necessary works that should be done so that later, actions can be taken to increase social capital. Social intelligence is one of the factors that can increase nurses' social capital. Aim To investigate the relationship between social capital and social intelligence among ICU and CCU nurses. Methods A researcher-made social capital questionnaire and the Tromsø social intelligence scale (TSIS) were distributed to ICU and CCU nurses (n = 170), and the correlation between social capital and social intelligence was calculated. Results The results reveal that the level of social capital and its dimensions as well as the social intelligence and its dimensions were more than average among the respondents of the study. The research demonstrated that social awareness, social information processing, and total social intelligence had significant and positive relationships with social capital and its dimensions. On the other hand, the social skills dimension was not significantly correlated with any of the dimensions of social capital (p > 0.05). In addition, there were significant and positive correlations between two socio-demographic variables of age and years of work experience and all of the social capital dimensions except capital between nurses and companions of patients (p < 0.05). Contrarily, there were not any significant correlations between gender and social capital dimensions, nor between educational degree and social capital dimensions. Conclusion As the social capital of nurses goes up, the quality of nursing care improves. So, managers must take wise strategies to increase social capital. One of the measures that they can do is to increase social intelligence by taking wise strategies.