Managing (im) patience of nurses and nurse's aides: Emotional labour and normalizing practices at geriatric facilities.

Abstract

Nurses and nurse's aides at geriatric facilities face demanding patients and challenging situations that trigger undesired emotions. The psychological implications of care workers' emotional labour have been extensively researched, but not so their emotional experiences and the regulation of these emotions aimed at normalizing the extraordinary situations that arise in the course of geriatric care. The present study is based on data collected in interviews with 36 nurses and nurse's aides, and nine health professionals and management-level employees, on participant observations, and on field notes collected over a period of 14months at two geriatric institutions in Israel. The data reveal the construction of patience and impatience as the pivotal emotional experience that needs regulation to cope successfully with extraordinary situations. The findings suggest that strict patience-display rules were constructed as an occupational impetus that exacts a price by increasing emotional load. Patience was regulated continually by normalizing practices that were culturally embedded in the organizations, by reframing patients' abusive behaviours, and by diffusing undesired emotions using detachment and disengagement practices. The findings contribute to the scarce empirical research on emotional labour of nurse's aides, and to the conceptualization and empirical study of nurses' normalizing regulation practices as cultural-organizational artefacts.