Emotional labour at work and at home among Greek health-care home professionals

The emotionally taxing nature of health-care work has been increasingly recognized. In parallel, the field of work and family has been searching for more specific antecedents of both work interference with family (WFI) and family interference with work (FWI). The current study aims to examine the relationship between surface acting and hiding negative emotions with WFI and FWI among Greek health-care professionals.

The research is a cross-sectional study of 180 Greek doctors and 84 nurses using self-report measures.

Results indicated that, for doctors, surface acting at work was positively related to WFI and, for nurses, surface acting at home was positively related to FWI.

The respondents were sampled on a convenience basis and the non-random procedure may have introduced unmeasured selection effects. The present study is cross-sectional and thus the postulated relationships cannot be interpreted causally.

Emotional management training and opportunities for emotional decompression for Greek health-care professionals should be explored. In terms of medical education, the need to train students to understand and cope with emotional demands is an important first step. This research highlights the need for communication-skills training courses facilitating emotional awareness and emotional management.

These findings position emotional labour as an important antecedent of both WFI and FWI.