The Concept of Emotional Labor in Health Sector

Abstract

Emotions which are the feelings that humans experience, think and manage personally emerge by means of social interactions. Naturally emotions are significant in this process and for this reason it is desired to make use of emotions of employees as well and they are desired and expected to keep customer satisfaction at maximum level. Although emotion is abstract and very personal under normal conditions, today it has become almost a concrete product with economic value. Particularly in the health sectors the interest in using emotional labor grows increasingly in line with increasing significance of quality and use of emotional labor is deemed as one of the basic conditions of providing service quality. Emotional labor is generally accepted as one of the role requirements of the employee and expresses the efforts for exhibiting certain emotions requested by the sector or hiding certain emotions undesired by the sector. The purpose of this study is to specify the significance of the concept of emotional labor in the health sectors defined as the effort paid by the health employees who are in one-to-one communication with patients in the process of making their emotion exhibitions in conformity with the standards determined by health sectors. DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2013.v4n9p775