Dilemmas of emotion work in nursing under market‐driven health care

Abstract

Therapeutic emotion work is one aspect of a range of emotion work performed by nurses as they manage their own and their patients’ feelings with the intention of improving health outcomes. Nurses have developed, sustained and passed on these often “invisible” knowledges and skills with little official recognition. Recent structural changes implemented under the logics of managed care have paradoxically both diminished and accentuated the importance of emotion work. For the nurses interviewed in this qualitative study, competing work models of productivity, efficiency and caring have led to both anger and sadness over what is being lost, and to various accommodations to “make it work.” What happens to interpersonal labour when the time to accomplish it is dramatically reduced, yet demands for patient satisfaction and quality customer relations have increased?

Citation

Bone, D. (2002), "Dilemmas of emotion work in nursing under market‐driven health care", International Journal of Public Sector Management, Vol. 15 No. 2, pp. 140-150. https://doi.org/10.1108/09513550210419564