Can Emotionally Intelligent Mental Health Nurse Leaders Influence Workforce Sustainability? A Scoping Review

Due to a global shortage of nursing staff, there is renewed attention on the impact of leadership and management styles on the sustainability of the nursing workforce. Emotional intelligence (EI), the ability to manage both your own emotions and to perceive and understand the emotions of others, has been implicated as a nursing management style impacting reduced turnover and greater nurse wellbeing. Despite these promising findings, there is a dearth of research on the role of emotionally intelligent leadership on the retention of mental health nurses. This scoping review aimed to (1) explore whether the findings from EI leadership in general nursing settings can be contextualised to mental health nurse leaders and (2) whether emotional intelligent leadership can influence the retention of mental health nurses. We used Arksey and O'Malley's framework to conduct this scoping review, locating 987 papers in our initial search. After screening, 30 papers remained; most methodologies were quantitative (n = 20), followed by qualitative (n = 8) and mixed methods (n = 2). This review found that while this concept has been studied extensively in the general nursing context, there is a lack of research into EI as a leadership style in mental health nursing. Where EI was the dominant leadership style, turnover intention was lower. However, despite showing promise in other settings, because of distinct differences between nursing contexts and workforce characteristics, it is difficult to state that emotionally intelligent leadership would be effective in mental health settings. There is therefore an urgent need identified to explore leadership styles in mental health settings to determine whether they impact retention and turnover, which will have significant implications for organisations, staff and consumers. We recommend that mental health nurse leaders be provided with EI training and education to ensure that they are equipped to provide the necessary support and leadership to sustain and grow the mental health nursing workforce.