CARING UNDER PRESSURE: EXPLORING EMOTIONAL LABOR AND THE LIVED EXPERIENCES OF NURSES AT MARDAN MEDICAL COMPLEX

Abstract

Nursing activities are emotional, requiring nurses to control their feelings while demonstrating warmth and care to patients and their family members. This study is a qualitative phenomenological study that aimed to explore the lived experience of emotional labour of nurses in Mardan Medical Complex (MMC), Pakistan. The study explored nurses' emotions, their expression and regulation of emotions, and how they cope with emotions in the context of nurses' work. The data collected were in-depth interviews with 15 nurses who were selected using purposive sampling; the data were analyzed thematically in order to identify patterns and meanings in the experiences of the participants. The theory used in this study was Arlie Russell Hochschild's theory of emotional labour (1983), which was used as a basis for understanding the emotional aspects of the nurses. The results yielded five key themes: (1) emotional experiences of nursing (2) institutional factors influencing emotional labour (3) sociocultural influences (4) psychological impacts (5) coping strategies. The results showed that emotional labour is part of nursing work, but often very much hidden; and that it is influenced by individual experiences and wider factors within the organisation and wider sociocultural context. Although nurses experienced significant emotional loading, they continued to care for the patients and used a range of coping mechanisms to deal with the stress of their work. The study shows that emotional labour should be acknowledged, and that there is a need to enhance psychological support, staffing, workload management, peer-support systems, and supportive workplace policies in healthcare institutions.