The Impact of Spiritual Intelligence on Aggressive Behavior, Considering the Mediating Role of Professional Ethics: A Case Study of Nurses of Imam Ali (pbuh) Hospital in Alborz, Iran

 Employees’ intelligence is an important variable in an organization's environment. Managers of organizations want employees who have higher intelligence. One of the types of intelligence that has recently been the focus of attention of the world scientific community is spiritual intelligence. In addition, due to the specific circumstances of the hospital environment, professional ethics plays an important role in the emergence of positive behaviors and non-destructive behaviors in the hospital environment. One of the destructive behaviors of the hospital environment, especially for nurses who directly provide services, is aggressive behaviors. Therefore, after reviewing the research background, the present study aims to investigate the effect of spiritual intelligence on aggressive behaviors with the mediating role of professional ethics in Imam Ali Hospital in Alborz province in 2019.

 This is a descriptive correlational study. For this purpose, standard questionnaires of spiritual intelligence, professional ethics, and aggressive behaviors after evaluating their validity (content and construct validity) and reliability (Cronbach's alpha method) were used to collect the required data from 1100 nurses of Imam Ali (AS) Hospital in Alborz, Iran. The collected data were analyzed by one sample t-test and structural equation modeling. In the present study, all the ethical considerations were observed and the authors declared no conflict of interests.

 The results of the mean test indicated that nurses in Imam Ali Hospital in Alborz had acceptable an level of spiritual intelligence and professional ethics. In addition, nurses in the hospital exhibit low aggressive behaviors. Meanwhile, the results of structural equation modeling indicate that spiritual intelligence has a positive and significant effect on nurses' professional ethics. Both spiritual intelligence and professional ethics have negative but significant effects on aggressive behaviors of nurses; ultimately, the mediating role of professional ethics in the relationship between spiritual intelligence and aggressive behaviors has been confirmed.

 Improving the spiritual intelligence indicators and variable is effective in promoting professional ethics and decrease the incidence of aggressive behaviors in hospitals. Further, nurses' professional ethics facilitate the impact of spiritual intelligence on reducing aggressive behaviors and act as a mediating factor.