Investigation of the relationship between nurses' emotional labor behaviors and their ethical attitudes in care

The aim of the research is to examine the relationship between nurses' emotional labor behaviors and ethical attitudes in care. The population of the research consists of 784 nurses working in public hospitals, university hospitals and private hospitals in Düzce city center between 15 May 2023 and 15 November 2023. According to the power analysis, for the correlation test, the power of the test was calculated as 95% with an error rate of 0.05 and a 95% confidence interval with an error rate of 0.05, and it was concluded that the total number of samples should be 138 nurses. The research was completed with 270 nurses. The data of the study were collected using a personal information form containing socio-demographic information, "Nurses' Emotional Labor Behavior Scale" and "Ethical Attitudes in Nursing Care Scale". Independent T test, One-Way Analysis of Variance (Anova), Levene test, Bonferonni test, Tamhane's T2 test, Pearson Correlation Analysis and SPSS V23 were used to analyze the data. The average age of the participants in the research was 33.79±7.98 years, the average total working time in the profession was 11.88±8.41 years, while the average working time in the current unit was 6.31±6.40 years, 78.1% were women, It was determined that 67.8% of them were married and 63% had a bachelor's degree. Nurses' emotional labor behavior mean score was 3.86±0.63; Surface behavior subscale mean score is 3.79±0.67; Mean score of the in-depth behavior subscale is 3.85±0.66; Sincere behavior subscale mean score is 3.99±0.72; The mean ethical attitude score in nursing care was determined as 67.00±30.74. In the study, it was observed that there was no statistically significant relationship between the Nurses' Emotional Labor Behavior Scale and its Superficial Behavior, In-Depth Behavior, Sincere Behavior sub-dimensions and the Ethical Attitudes in Nursing Care Scale (p>0.05). In conclusion, It is recommended to further investigate emotional labor behaviors in nurses and take precautions for situations affecting nurses, to raise awareness of nurses about their ethical attitudes in care, and to plan studies with larger sample groups and different working environments to determine the levels of nurses' emotional labor behavior and ethical attitudes in care.