Objective: This research was carried out to determine levels of emotional intelligence and ethical reasoning abilities of head physicians and nurse managers working at public hospitals in Istanbul as well as personal and professional factors which might affect those levels and abilities. Methods: This descriptive research study was conducted on head physicians and nurse managers who had been working at 55 public state hospitals between 25 February 2011 and 25 May 2012. 35 head physicians and 52 nurse managers who accepted to participate to study were included in the research. An Introduction form, Emotional Intelligence Scale and Ethics Principles Scale were used as datacollecting tools. The average, percentage, standard deviation, t-test among independent groups, Mann Whitney U test, Kruskal-Wallis test and Pearson correlation analysis were also used. Results: The average Emotional Intelligence Scale score of managers was found to be 4.09-0.40. The nurse manager group had higher emotional intelligence scores than the head physician group and this situation was statistically signifi cant. The emotional intelligence levels of managers were affected by their gender and educational levels (p<0.05). The average score of the Ethics Principles Scale of nurse managers was 3.88-0.38. The ethical reasoning abilities scores of head physician group were higher than nurse manager group, but there wasn t any statistically-signifi cant difference between the two groups. The ages of managers affected the ethical reasoning ability levels of managers (p<0.05). It was also determined that there was a positive correlation between levels of emotional intelligence and ethical reasoning abilities of nurse managers (p<0.01). Conclusion: According to the fi ndings, it was determined that emotional intelligence and ethical reasoning ability scores of nurse managers were above average, and as the emotional intelligence levels increased, ethical reasoning ability levels also increased.