Background: Students' gaining and adopting basic professional values, improving their emotional intelligence skills during the process of nursing education plays a significant role on meeting the needs of healthy/patient individual and his or her family, and individualized care practices.
Objectives: This (descriptive, correlational) research was carried out to evaluate the nursing values, emotional intelligence levels, and individualized care perceptions of senior nursing students and to determine the relationship between them.
Research question: (1) What is the status of students to adopt nursing values? (2) What is the level of students' emotional intelligence? (3) What is the students' individualized care perception? (4) Is there a relationship between students' nursing values, levels of emotional intelligence, and individualized perceptions of care?
Participants and research context: The research was carried out with 218 senior nursing students at the Faculty of Nursing, affiliated to a state university in Istanbul, who agreed to participate in the study, completing basic nursing education in May 2017.
Ethical considerations: Ethical approval for this study was obtained from the Ethics Committee of Clinical Investigations of the Istanbul University Dentistry Faculty. Written permission was also obtained from the institution that research would be conducted. Before the data were collected, verbal permission was obtained by the investigator.
Findings: It was observed that nursing values perceptions of students, emotional intelligence levels and individualized care perceptions were at a good level and there was a supportive relationship between them in the positive direction. It was determined that emotional intelligence skills of students, adoption of nursing values and individualized care perceptions increased in parallel with each other.
Conclusion: In nursing education, nursing values peculiar to affective field, caring behaviors, and emotional intelligence skills that are guiding to maintain and direct these behaviors should be gained to students by supporting with correct learning methods and role models.
Keywords: Emotional intelligence; individualized care; nursing students; nursing values; professional values.