Effects of current emotional labor on quality of professional life in operation room nurses

Abstract

Objective To explore the status quo of emotional labor in operation room nurses and to analyze its effects on quality of professional life, so as to provide a reference for improving physical and mental health of operation room nurses and driving the building and development of the specialized nurse team. Methods Totally 203 operation room nurses from 4 general ClassⅢ Grade A hospitals in Jiangxi province from May to June 2018 were selected using convenient sampling, and the status quo of their emotional labor was investigated with the general information questionnaire, Nurse's Emotional Labor Scale and Nurse's Quality of Professional Life Scale. Results The total average score of emotional labor of the operation room nurses was (3.68±0.55) , including (3.57±0.76) for deep acting, (4.28±0.80) for emotional expression and (3.50±0.74) for surface acting from high to low. Univariate analysis revealed that there was statistically significant difference in surface acting scores between operation room nurses with different length of service, in deep acting scores between operation room nurses with different age, professional title and clinical teaching and in emotional expression scores between operation room scores with different educational background (P<0.05) . Emotional labor was correlated with the various factors of quality of professional life. Surface acting had negative predictive power for kindness satisfaction (β=-0.317, P<0.01) , and positive predictive power for job burnout (β=0.337, P<0.01) and secondary trauma (β=0.264, P<0.01) . Deep acting had positive predictive power for kindness satisfaction, and negative predictive power for job burnout (β=0.303, P<0.01) and secondary trauma (β=0.281, P<0.01) . Emotional expression requirements had positive predictive power for kindness satisfaction (β=0.191, P<0.01) . Multivariate linear regression analysis showed that surface acting, deep acting and emotional expression requirements were the main influencing factors to kindness satisfaction, and that surface acting and deep acting were the main influencing factors to job burnout and secondary trauma. Conclusions The emotional labor of operation room nurses stays at a medium level, and the emotional labor strategy mostly frequently used is deep acting. Surface acting, deep acting and emotional expression requirements in emotional labor have predictive power for quality of professional life, and managers should pay attention to the education and training of emotional labor for operation room nurses. Key words: Nurses; Operation room; Emotional labor; Quality of professional life