Exploring the Usefulness of Essential Quotient in Nursing Education

Abstract

Nursing education like other educational institutions has utilized Intelligent Quotient in assessing the academic achievement of nursing students neglecting student’s emotional, physical, and spiritual coping abilities which may contribute immensely to the success of the individuals' goals in life. This is because a prospective nursing student may enter nursing training with a range of psychological, social, and emotional needs. The argument here is that physical, intellectual, emotional, and spiritual quotients, also known as Essential Quotient (EQ) are innate in man and can influence the acquisition of knowledge. This paper explores the need to in-cooperate the four EQ into the curriculum of the nursing education program. The underpinning is that the nursing student of today should emerge as a practitioner with high scholarship and intellectual capabilities for questioning and research. Nursing students must be helped to build on the qualities they already possess to develop excellence in their nursing practice. This, therefore, challenges nurse educators to teach nursing students, to think, to understand, and criticize beliefs and assumptions that guide their practice. Strategies for sustaining the change within the content of nursing education are identified.