Emotional Labour In Health Care

Do nurses still care? In today’s inflexible, fast-paced and more accountable workplace where biomedical and clinical models dominate health care practice, is there room for emotional labour? Based on original empirical research, this book delves into personal accounts of nurses' emotion expressions and experiences as they emerge from everyday nursing practice, and illustrates how their emotional labour is adapting in response to a constantly changing work environment. The book begins by re-examining Arlie Hochschild’s sociological notion of emotional labour, and combines it with Margaret Archer’s understanding of emotion and the inner dialogue. In an exploration of the nature of emotional labour, its historical and political context, and providing original, but easily recognisable, typology, Catherine Theodosius emphasises that it is emotion – complex, messy and opaque – that drives emotional labour within health care. She suggests that rather than being marginalised, emotional labour in nursing is frequently found in places that are hidden or unrecognised. By understanding emotion itself, which is fundamentally interactive and communicative, she argues that emotional labour is intrinsically linked to personal and social identity. The suggestion is made that the nursing profession has a responsibility to include emotional labour within personal and professional development strategies to ensure the care needs of the vulnerable are met. This innovative volume will be of interest to nursing, health care and sociology students, researchers and professionals.

This stimulating and original study is written for nurses, midwives, health visitors and others, such as teachers, social workers and managers engaged in 'caring'. It will interest a variety of students, not only of nursing, but also of women's studies and sociology. The research on which this book is based shows the importance of the charge nurse or ward sister in making emotional style in which it was given, and that nurses felt better able to care for patients and colleagues when their learning environment was emotionally supportive.

The Dark Side of Emotional Labour explores the work that the rest of society would rather not think about, the often unseen work that is emotionally disturbing, exhausting, upsetting, and stigmatising. This is work that is simultaneously undesirable and rewarding, work whose tasks are eschewed and yet necessary for the effective function of individual organisations and society at large. Diverse and challenging, this book examines how workers such as the doorman, the HR manager, the waiter and the doctor’s receptionist experience verbal aggression and intimidation; how the prison officer and home carer respond to the emotions associated with physical violence, and; how the Samaritan, banker and veterinarian deal in death and despair. It also considers how different individuals develop the emotional capital necessary to cope with the dark side of emotional labour, and how individuals can make sense of, and come to take satisfaction and pride in, such difficult work. Finally, the book considers what is to be done with darker emotional work, both in terms of the management and care of those labouring on the dark side. Challenging and original, this book gives a voice to those who undertake the most demanding work on our behalf. It will be of interest to researchers and students of organisation studies and its related fields, and to every one of us who is called on to work or manage on the Dark Side.

Ordered to Care examines the ideology, practice, and efforts at reforming American nursing from 1850-1945.

Most public service jobs require interpersonal contact that is either face-to-face or voice-to-voice - relational work that goes beyond testable job skills but is essential for job completion. This unique book focuses on this emotional labor and what it takes to perform it.The authors weave a powerful narrative of stories from the trenches gleaned through interviews, focus groups, and survey data. They go beyond the veneer of service delivery to the real, live, person-to-person interactions that give meaning to public service.For anyone who has ever felt apathetic toward government work, the words of caseworkers, investigators, administrators, attorneys, correctional staff, and 9/11 call-takers all show the human dimension of bureaucratic work and underscore what it means to work "with feeling."

Change is frequent in healthcare, yet change management is often far from perfect. This book considers the complexity of change within large organisations, explores existing models of change and emphasises the vital role of emotional and cognitive readiness in successful change management. Despite the plethora of organisational change management approaches used in healthcare, the success rate of change in organisations can be as low as 30 percent. New thinking about change management is required to improve success in service development, improvement and innovation. Arguing that emotional and cognitive readiness for change requires engagement with the people involved, and a thorough understanding of areas of friction and potential challenge, this book also delves into the neglected issue of emotion, examining emotional labour and emotion and change. It investigates how human emotion can be incorporated into Change Management Models, alongside and intertwined with cognitive approaches, to support effective change. Using the NHS as a central case study, this book incorporates examples of actual change from a range of healthcare settings from acute to primary care, enabling readers to see how Change Management Models can be adapted and utilised in practice. This is an essential read for students, as future change leaders, and practitioners and managers leading and managing change in healthcare.

This book reviews, integrates, and synthesizes research on emotional labor and emotion regulation conducted over the past 30 years. The concept of emotional labor was first proposed by Dr. Arlie Russell Hochschild (1983), who defined it as "the management of feeling to create a publicly observable facial and bodily display" (p. 7) for a wage. A basic assumption of emotional labor theory is that many jobs (e.g., customer service, healthcare, team-based work, management) have interpersonal, and thus emotional, requirements and that well-being and effectiveness in these jobs is determined, in part, by a person’s ability to meet these requirements. Since Hochschild’s initial work, psychologists, sociologists, and management scholars have developed distinct theoretical approaches aimed at expanding and elaborating upon Hochschild’s core ideas. Broadly speaking, emotional labor is the study of how emotion regulation of oneself and others influences social dynamics at work, which has implications for performance and well being in a wide range of occupations and organizational contexts. This book offers researchers and practitioners a review of emotional labor theory and research that integrates the various perspectives into a coherent framework, and proposes an agenda for future research on this increasingly relevant and important topic. The book is divided into 5 main sections, with the first section introducing and defining emotional labor as well as creating a framework for the rest of the book to follow. The second section consists of chapters describing emotional labor theory at different levels of analysis, including the event, person, dyad, and group. The third section illustrates the diversity of emotional labor in distinct occupational contexts: customer service (e.g. restaurant, retail), call centers, and caring work. The fourth section considers broader contextual influences – organizational-, societal-, and cultural-level factors – that modify how and when emotional labor is done. The final section presents a series of ‘reflective essays’ from eminent scholars in the area of emotion and emotion regulation, where they reflect upon the past, present and future of emotion regulation at work.

From Gemma Hartley, the journalist who ignited a national conversation on emotional labor, comes Fed Up, a bold dive into the unpaid, invisible work women have shouldered for too long—and an impassioned vision for creating a better future for us all. Day in, day out, women anticipate and manage the needs of others. In relationships, we initiate the hard conversations. At home, we shoulder the mental load required to keep our households running. At work, we moderate our tone, explaining patiently and speaking softly. In the world, we step gingerly to keep ourselves safe. We do this largely invisible, draining work whether we want to or not—and we never clock out. No wonder women everywhere are overtaxed, exhausted, and simply fed up. In her ultra-viral article “Women Aren’t Nags—We’re Just Fed Up,” shared by millions of readers, Gemma Hartley gave much-needed voice to the frustration and anger experienced by countless women. Now, in Fed Up, Hartley expands outward from the everyday frustrations of performing thankless emotional labor to illuminate how the expectation to do this work in all arenas—private and public—fuels gender inequality, limits our opportunities, steals our time, and adversely affects the quality of our lives. More than just name the problem, though, Hartley teases apart the cultural messaging that has led us here and asks how we can shift the load. Rejecting easy solutions that don’t ultimately move the needle, Hartley offers a nuanced, insightful guide to striking real balance, for true partnership in every aspect of our lives. Reframing emotional labor not as a problem to be overcome, but as a genderless virtue men and women can all learn to channel in our quest to make a better, more egalitarian world, Fed Up is surprising, intelligent, and empathetic essential reading for every woman who has had enough with feeling fed up.