Emotional intelligence, empathy and alexithymia: a cross-sectional survey on emotional competence in a group of nursing students.

Background: Emotional intelligence (EI) is the ability to recognize and manage one's own and others' emotions, empathy is the ability to understand how others feel, whereas alexithymia represents the difficulty in feeling and verbally expressing emotions.  Emotional competences are important requirements for positive outcomes in nursing profession.

The Aim Of The Study: To analyze EI, empathy and alexithymia in nursing students.