Objective To analyze the differences in emotional labor of clinical nurses with different demographic characteristics who work in tertiary class A general hospitals in Chengde City, in order to provide a theoretical basis for nurses to make better use of emotional labor in clinical work.
Methods A total of 400 ward nurses were recruited through convenient sampling from two tertiary class A hospitals in Chengde City. Data were collected using a self-designed demographic questionnaire and a nurse emotional labor questionnaire. SPSS 17.0 statistical software was used to analyze the obtained data.
Results A total of 383 valid questionnaires were returned (95.8%). The nurses' scores of the emotional labor questionnaire from high to low were as follows: deep acting (23.31& #177;5.81), variety of emotional required (12.30& #177;4.13), and surface acting (6.39& #177;2.44). There were statistical differences in the scores of the three emotional labor dimensions among the nurses grouped by age, service history, professional title, educational level, marital status, staffing category (official staff or contract staff), and salary (P < 0.05). Specifically, the nurses at ≤ 30 years old and with service history of 1-5 years showed lower deep acting scores than the others. Married nurses (versus unmarried nurses) and official nurses (versus contract nurses) reported higher scores of both deep acting and surface acting; nurses with bachelor degree or above (versus those with college degree and below) reported higher scores of deep acting (all P < 0.05). Moreover, the scores of both were different among those with different professional titles.
Conclusion The nursing staff present generally good emotional labor. It is highly suggested that nurse managers should create a healthy emotional labor environment to facilitate nurse's emotional adjustment in daily and occupational stress management, and should provide special aids including intervention and consultation to younger nurses.
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