Module 4: Cross cutting issues

4.3 Emotional labour 

It can take a great deal of time, care and skill to support families. It may be important to recognise this when thinking about your own work load.

There are many elements to supporting families – clearly conveying honest information about their relative, demonstrating good care, and avoiding giving misleading information among other things. But there can also be an element of trying to stay calm and receptive in the face of family distress and making sure stresses you are experiencing don’t ‘leak out’ in the work setting in the wrong way. (And of course, it’s not just families this may apply to, it may be true of colleagues too!)

Some staff working with PDoC patients find the term ’emotional labour’ useful.

This term was first coined by the sociologist Arlie Hochschild in her 1983 book: “The Managed Heart”. 

She came up with the term ’emotional labor” to refer to the work of managing one’s own emotions that was required by certain professions. The focus of her study was on flight attendants, who are expected to smile and be friendly even in stressful situations, and to keep passengers calm. Hochschild (1983) said that emotional labour involves the induction or suppression of feeling to sustain an outward appearance that produces in others a sense of being cared for in a convivial safe place.

In an earlier module we discussed how some professionals working with PDoC patients can feel de-skilled, experience emotional or moral distress and suffer from burn out. What ever strong feelings staff experience they have to ‘manage’ these, especially in relation to patients’ families. The challenges of working with PDoC patients are much greater than for flight attendants, not least because the destination may be unknown and is unlikely to be one the family wants!

Post a comment below

Do you do ’emotional labour’ in your work? Does the concept have any value for you.

Some people like the term ’emotional labour’, some don’t – what do you think?

Well done. You have completed module 4 of the course.