Spiritual Intelligence and its Relationship with Midwives’ Clinical Performance and Dimensions

Background & Aims:

The job performance of midwives largely determines the quality of healthcare services. Spiritual intelligence refers to a set of capabilities encompassing effective compatibility and problem-solving behaviors. Accordingly, the present study aimed to investigate the relationship between midwives' spiritual intelligence and their clinical performance.

Materials & Methods:

This correlation study included 232 midwives working in the maternity wards of the hospitals and healthcare centers affiliated with the Mashhad University of Medical Sciences. The random sampling and stratified cluster sampling methods were adopted in the maternity wards and healthcare centers, respectively. The required data were collected using personal information forms, Badi’s Spiritual Intelligence Questionnaire, and Hadizadeh’s Justified Performance scale for the direct observation of the midwives’ clinical performance. The data analysis was performed using SPSS software version 16. P< 0.05 was set as the significance level.

According to the results, the mean scores of the participants’ spiritual intelligence and clinical performance were 188.6±19.7 and 1.5±0.4, respectively. The Spearman correlation tests indicated no significant correlation between spiritual intelligence and the total clinical performance or its dimensions (namely communication, education, and caregiving) (P>0.05).

Important variables other than spiritual intelligence influence clinical performance. It appears that in the case of clinical performance of those dealing with human lives, the staff strive to improve the patients’ conditions under all circumstances and would never compromise their great responsibilities under any conditions.