Evaluation of moral intelligence in pre-hospital emergency health employees: The case of Bolu-Düzce

Objective: In this study, it was aimed to evaluate the moral intelligence of prehospital emergency health care workers and to reveal whether moral intelligence parameters differ in terms of various socio-demographic characteristics or not. Method: The data of the study were obtained through the Socio-demographic Data Form and the Survey for Measuring Moral Intelligence in the Provision of Healthcare Services between November 2021 and February 2022. Descriptive statistics, kurtosis-skewness values, Kolmogorov-Smirnov test, Mann Whitney U test, Kruskal Wallis H test, Dunn's test and Spearman correlation analysis were used to assess the data. Results: The number of the 130 (49.8%) participants were female, while 131 (50.2%) were male with a mean age of 30.77±6.10. The mean scores of the scale dimensions of the participants: equality 4.47±0.57; empathy 4.32±0.58; moral intelligence 4.26±0.58; fairness 4.04±0.61; tolerance 4.42±0.58; self-control 4.46±0.57; kindness 4.30±0.66. There was no significant difference between the groups in terms of gender, education level, working time, working system, income level and having children in the scale dimensions of the participants. Single/widowed/divorced/separated participants had significantly higher empathy (p=0.004), fairness (p=0.039) and self-control (p=0.009) levels compared to married participants. Self-control levels of paramedics were found to be higher than those of health officers/nurses/midwives/others (p=0.015). Conclusion: Participants demonstrated high sensitivity towards equality, empathy, moral intelligence, fairness, tolerance, self-control, and kindness in health care delivery. It is thought that the high sensitivity of employees to moral intelligence parameters may be effective in solving both ethical and other issues related to moral intelligence parameters that they may encounter in the prehospital area.