The Relationship between Nurses’ Moral Intelligence and Caring Behaviors among Nurses in Neonatal Intensive Care Units

Abstract

Background: Neonatal intensive care units (NICUs) represent highly complex health care environments, where nurses face ethical dilemmas, emotional stressors, and difficult clinical decision-making processes. Moral intelligence, understood as the capacity to use ethical principles and values in decision-making and professional behavior, might affect nurses’ caring behaviors and patient care. Although many pieces of research have been published internationally, there is a scarcity of research on this relationship among NICU nurses in Palestine. Objective: To examine the relationship between moral intelligence and caring behaviors among nurses working in NICUs in Palestinian hospitals. Methods: A cross-sectional design was carried out among 171 nurses who work in level II and III NICUs in governmental hospitals in the West Bank. Data were gathered through the Moral Intelligence Questionnaire and the Caring Behaviors Assessment Tool Nursing Version–Short Form (CBAN-SF). The data analysis included descriptive statistics, Pearson correlation, independent-samples t-tests, ANOVA, and multiple linear regression analyses using SPSS version 27. Results: The participants had relatively high scores for their moral intelligence (mean = 71.8 ± 5.4) and caring behavior (mean = 99.8 ± 12.4). Moral intelligence correlated positively with caring behavior (r = 0.314, p < 0.001). Caring behavior correlated positively with the age of the participant (r = 0.266, p < 0.001) and nursing experience (r = 0.294, p < 0.001). Nurses of the female gender exhibited significantly higher scores in caring behavior than nurses of the male gender (p = 0.009). Multiple regression analysis indicated that moral intelligence (B = 0.701, p < 0.001) and female gender (B = 5.147, p = 0.005) were significantly related to caring behavior accounting for 23% of the variance.  Conclusions: Moral intelligence is positively correlated with caring behaviors in NICU nurses. Enhancing the moral intelligence of nurses can help enhance their caring behaviors.