Emotional labor

About: Emotional labor is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 3948 publications have been published within this topic receiving 112110 citations. The topic is also known as: emotional labour.

Emotional Labor and Crisis Response: Working on the Razor's Edge : Working on the Razor's Edge

Abstract: The author's of the award-winning Emotional Labor now go inside the stressful world of suicide, rape, and domestic hotline workers, EMTs, triage nurses, and agency/deparment spokespersons, to provide powerful insights into how emotional labor is actually exerted by public servants who face the gravest challenges.

Testing the impact of emotional labor on work exhaustion for three distinct emergency medical service (EMS) samples

Abstract: Purpose – This paper's aim is to study a neglected relationship: testing the impact of emotional labor on the work exhaustion for samples of emergency medical service (EMS) professionals.Design/methodology/approach – Three distinct samples of EMS professionals, i.e. emergency medical technician (EMT) – basic, EMT – intermediate, and paramedic, were surveyed to test the impact of three variable sets, personal (e.g. gender, age, health), work‐related (e.g. years of service, job satisfaction), and emotional labor (i.e. surface acting, deep acting) on work exhaustion.Findings – Results across the three samples consistently showed that surface acting had a significantly stronger positive impact than deep acting on work exhaustion. In addition it was found that surface acting had a significantly stronger negative relationship to job satisfaction than deep acting. Surface acting also had a significant negative relationship to perceived health. Years of service were positively related to work exhaustion across al...

The Emotional Labor of Personal Grief in Palliative Care: Balancing Caring and Professional Identities.

Abstract: The paid provision of care for dying persons and their families blends commodified emotion work and attachments to two often-conflicting role identities: the caring person and the professional. We explore how health care employees interpret personal grief related to patient death, drawing on interviews with 12 health care aides and 13 nurses. Data were analyzed collaboratively using an interpretively embedded thematic coding approach and constant comparison. Participant accounts of preventing, postponing, suppressing, and coping with grief revealed implicit meanings about the nature of grief and the appropriateness of grief display. Employees often struggled to find the time and space to deal with grief, and faced normative constraints on grief expression at work. Findings illustrate the complex ways health care employees negotiate and maintain both caring and professional identities in the context of cultural and material constraints. Implications of emotional labor for discourse and practice in health care settings are discussed.

Stress in NHS staff triggers defensive inward-focussing and an associated loss of connection with colleagues: this is reversed by Schwartz Rounds

Abstract: The aim of this case study was to examine the impact of Schwartz Rounds on staff wellbeing and patient care. A series of interviews were conducted with staff, regarding stress. The key themes, which were extracted using Grounded Theory, were used to inform the development of a new measure, ‘The Organizational Response to Emotions Scale’. This was administered at the beginning and end of Schwartz Rounds. Analysis of the results revealed a significant reduction in attendees’ appraisal of emotional labour and an increase in reflection. This was associated with a reported upsurge in feelings of interconnectivity and compassion towards colleagues. More traditional forms of individualised staff support were in contrast, viewed as unhelpful. In particular, the offer of counselling sessions was resented by many staff because it carried the implicit message that the problem arose from a deficiency or weakness within them. New performance management policies compounded this problem and left many feeling blamed and punished for their stress. A referral to Occupational Health was widely seen as an index of failure; a sign that they could not cope. Attendance at the Schwartz Rounds helped staff to recognise that their feelings were normal in the context of a highly-pressured healthcare system. Eradicating the stigma associated with emotional responses should help to improve organizational culture. It may also help to address an emerging phenomenon that was identified within this study, namely that staff had begun to hide their feelings from their managers. In the longer term, this could serve to mask the true extent of stress and burnout within the NHS. The findings suggest that Schwartz Rounds may indirectly improve the quality of patient care by addressing the stress-induced cognitive narrowing and decline in empathy that precedes withdrawal; the process that is a likely forerunner of dehumanization. An additional finding was that the line manager played an important mediating role of containment. This, in turn, appeared to influence the level of support that staff provided to each other.