Do nurses still care? In today’s inflexible, fast-paced and more accountable workplace where biomedical and clinical models dominate health care practice, is there room for emotional labour? Based on original empirical research, this book delves into personal accounts of nurses' emotion expressions and experiences as they emerge from everyday nursing practice, and illustrates how their emotional labour is adapting in response to a constantly changing work environment. The book begins by re-examining Arlie Hochschild’s sociological notion of emotional labour, and combines it with Margaret Archer’s understanding of emotion and the inner dialogue. In an exploration of the nature of emotional labour, its historical and political context, and providing original, but easily recognisable, typology, Catherine Theodosius emphasises that it is emotion – complex, messy and opaque – that drives emotional labour within health care. She suggests that rather than being marginalised, emotional labour in nursing is frequently found in places that are hidden or unrecognised. By understanding emotion itself, which is fundamentally interactive and communicative, she argues that emotional labour is intrinsically linked to personal and social identity. The suggestion is made that the nursing profession has a responsibility to include emotional labour within personal and professional development strategies to ensure the care needs of the vulnerable are met. This innovative volume will be of interest to nursing, health care and sociology students, researchers and professionals.
Author(s): Cath Theodosius
Edition: 1
Year: 2008
Language: English
Pages: 248
Book Cover......Page 1
Title......Page 4
Copyright......Page 5
Contents......Page 8
Illustrations......Page 10
Table of vignettes......Page 12
Preface......Page 14
Acknowledgements......Page 16
Introduction: Challenging current conceptualisations of emotional labour......Page 18
Part I: Understanding emotional labour in nursing: A theoretical approach......Page 26
1 Emotion management and emotional labour: The work of Arlie Russell Hochschild......Page 30
2 Emotional labour in health care......Page 46
3 Emotion and cognition......Page 68
4 Synthesising Darwin and Freud with interactionist theory......Page 85
5 Emotion and personal and social identity......Page 107
Part II: Developing emotional labour in nursing: A theoretically informed empirical approach......Page 132
6 The emotional field......Page 137
7 Therapeutic emotional labour......Page 160
8 Instrumental emotional labour......Page 178
9 Collegial emotional labour......Page 195
10 Reflexive emotion management......Page 218
Bibliography......Page 237
Index......Page 244