Objective examining how emotional intelligence (EI), empathy and emotion regulation are defined and measured in recent research. This study aims to identify professional and older-person outcomes associated with these emotional resources, including wellbeing, communication, dignity, participation, quality of life and care experience. To assess how EI, empathy and emotion regulation are associated with person-centred care, individualised care and person-centred communication.
The included evidence spans cross-sectional, qualitative, systematic-review, meta-analytic, scoping-review and guidelines designs. Cross-sectional studies provide the clearest direct associations between professional emotional skills precede care behaviour outcomes, but they cannot establish whether emotional skills come before care behaviour. Mediation model is informative because it identifies work engagement as a possible pathway, yet the cross-sectional design cannot establish mediation in the temporal (Scheepers et al., 2023). The long-term care study, therefore supports a professional-capacity pathway but not a direct care-outcome conclusion (Wobeto et al., 2022). Qualitative work provides detail about how emotional capability is experienced and passed, but eight nurses cannot establish prevalence or effectiveness (Fookolaee et al., 2025). Systematic review provides broader data but require heterogeneity from their studies. The EI-training review found a consistently positive direction but warned about methodological overestimation (Powell et al., 2024). The virtual-reality study found capability improvement but no overall empathy effect (Wang et al., 2023).
Recent evidence indicates that empathy is associated with individualised care, especially in long-term care and that work engagement and job resources help enable this relationship. EI and compassion satisfaction are associated with self-reported person-centred care in nursing research. Emotion regulation is associated with vigour and lower anxiety and stress among long-term-care professionals. EI training tends to improve EI scores, while virtual-reality training improves caregiving competence more consistently than empathy. Recent qualitative, conceptual and leadership evidence shows that emotional competence is enacted through trust, adaptive interaction, clarification, self-control, role modelling, support and organisational culture.
This study contributes to the growing literature on EI by examining its role in delivering person-centred care among professionals working with older people. While previous research has explored EI and care quality separately, limited attention has been given to the specific influence of empathy and emotional control in person-centred care settings. The study provides insights into how these EI dimensions support effective caregiving practices and enhance the well-being of older adults. The findings offer practical implications for workforce development, training and the improvement of care services for ageing populations.
