Emotional labour and its consequences in health-care setting

Abstract

The psychosomatic consequences of emotional labour are numerous. However, the most often debated one is burnout. Employers, through enforcing emotional norms onto employees expose their employees to emotional exhaustion, and in the long run depersonalization. Nevertheless, not all levels of emotional labour are equally detrimental. Surface acting, and repressing of genuine emotions in particular had the most negative consequences according to the research data of 171 health care practitioners. Faking emotional displays different from the ones genuine emotions would induce also had its harmful outcome decreasing the respondents’ sense of personal performance. On the other hand, the satisfaction with life of those, who mostly displayed their genuine emotions, was rather lower than that of those, who faked emotional displays according to social/organisational expectations.emotional labour, burnout, health-care, oncology