Nurses comprise a majority of medical manpower at hospitals and are closely involved with patients in all areas of medical services. Failing to monitor patient conditions and immediately respond to changes in their conditions can lead to a direct threat to patient safety and health. Therefore, retaining experienced nurses with expertise and excellence is an important factor affecting patient satisfaction and hospital competitiveness. However, according to a recent study by the Korea Hospital Nurse Association (2013), the average turnover rate of nurses was 16.9%, which was is four times the overall 4.3% turnover rate of all industries in Korea during the same time period (Ministry of Employment and Labor, 2013). The increased turnover rate makes it difficult to retain veteran nurses, demoralizes remaining nurses, and increases nurse workload, resulting in a vicious cycle that contributes to new turnover conditions (Shin & Cho, 2013).
The nursing work environment refers to the organizational characteristics of the work site that promote or disturb professional nursing practice (Lake & Friese, 2006). Emotional intelligence (EI) refers to the ability to understand one's own and others' emotions in a variety of situations, control emotions, and make effective use of the emotions perceived (Wong & Law, 2002). Retention intention (RI) refers to intention to stop looking for a new job and stay in the current position (Cowin, 2002). Finding and strengthening predictive factors for nurse's intention to remain at their job site, thereby heightening their RI, and preventing job change are very urgent in managing the nursing workforce. To date, research on the relationship between nursing work environment and EI is rare, indicating the need to determine intercorrelations between these variables and RI.
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