Therapeutic empathy as emotional labor in the interaction of intencive care unit nurses with patients

In this research, the focus was on intensive care nurses as professionals who are expected to be empathic caregivers. They engage in such emotional labor through deep acting by generating empathetic emotional and cognitive reactions before and during consultations with the patient.Deep acting as an emotional labor is similar to the stage-acting of some actors. On the other hand, surface acting as an emotional labour refers to forging empathic behaviors towards the patients in the absence of consistent emotional and cognitive reactions.In some situations, the use of both deep acting and surface acting has been observed although intensive care nurses prefer deep acting they may rely on surface acting, when immediate understanding of emotional and cognitive needs of patients is imposible. Moreover, it has been argued that intensive care nurses are more beneficial to patients when they engage in the process of empathy during their consultations with patients.For this purpose, a number of hypotheses that are developed in the light of the literature review were tested in the present study the sample of the present study which was carried out in a public hospital in İstanbul consisted of 116 nurses. The participants completed two questionnaires including of the Emotional Labor Scale of which consisted of 26 questions and the Empathy Scale which consisted of 20 questions and a number of demographic questions.One of the hypotheses that the intensive care nurses would perceive quality of their life less positively than inpatient clinic nurses was supported by the data. However, the hypothesis that the empathy levels of intensive care nurses would be higher than inpatient clinic nurses, the hypothesis that as the empathy levels of inpatient clinic and intensive care nurses increased, the levels of deep acting as an emotional labor would increase and the hypothesis that as the empahy levels of inpatient clinic and intensive care nurses increased, the levels of surface acting as an emotional labor would increase, were refused on the basis of the analyses.Results have also shown that the empathy levels of nurses in general were negatively related to the number of patients cared, and that one of the dimensions of emotional labor, emotional effort was related to the working patterns of the nurses.The results of the present study have indicated that intensive-care nurses do not have a higher level of empathy, and they do not use deep acting more than inpatient clinic nurses, but they have perceived their quality of life more negatively. It can be concluded that nurses in general may be affected by some sources of stress related to their working environment but while they perform their duties, they continue to exhaust their emotional resources.Key Words: Empathy, Emotional Labour, Surface Acting, Deep Acting