Emotional experiences and coping strategies of nursing and midwifery practitioners in Ghana: a qualitative study
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RESEARCH ARTICLE
Open Access
Emotional experiences and coping strategies of nursing and midwifery practitioners in Ghana: a qualitative study Joshua King Safo Lartey1 , Joseph Osafo2,3* , Johnny Andoh-Arthur4
and Kwaku Oppong Asante2,5
Abstract Background: Emotional regulation forms an integral part of healthcare delivery. In the performance of the core duties of nursing and midwifery, health professionals are expected to enhance occupationally/organisationally required emotions. The purpose of this study is to explore. The meaning nurses and midwives give to emotional labour as well as the coping resources employed by these professionals in order to manage the emotional demands of their profession. Method: A qualitative study was conducted using a semi-structured interview guide with fifteen (15) purposively selected nurses and midwives. Interviews were recorded and simultaneously translated and transcribed. Thematic analysis was used to analyse the data. Results: Our findings showed that participants conceptualized emotional labour as display of rules. Sadness, abuse and bullying, poor incentivisation, emotional exhaustion and emotional mix bag were reported by the participants as emotional demands and deficits. Nurses and midwives coped with emotional labour through the use of five (5) main resources: psychological capital, routinisation of emotions, religious resources, social support and job security. Conclusion: Nursing and midwifery professional duties are accompanied with emotional regulations which tend to have consequential effects on a myriad of work-related issues. Clinical healthcare training needs to intensify and equip professionals with the skills of regulating and managing their emotions since managing emotional demands are central to effective healthcare delivery. Keywords: Emotional regulation, Emotional labour, Emotional demands, Coping strategies, Nurses and midwives; Ghana
Background At the heart of nursing and midwifery service delivery are emotional regulations and management [1, 2]. Thus, the professional duties of nursing and midwifery are accompanied by diverse emotional situations including, but not limited to, abuse by supervisors and clients, death of clients which elicits sadness and chronic * Correspondence: [email protected]; [email protected] 2 Department of Psychology, University of Ghana, P. O. Box LG 84, Legon, Accra, Ghana 3 Centre for Suicide and Violnece Research- (CSVR), Ghana, Republic of Ghana Full list of author information is available at the end of the article
conditions of clients which are both physically and emotionally demanding and therefore, leads to job burnout [3–5]. Even though there exist various areas of emotional regulation and management in professional healthcare, emotional labour has become one of the areas of concern in recent emotional management literature [6], especially among nurses [7]. To explain emotional labour, nurses and other health professionals, as part of their job description, are expected to show positive and organizationally/occupa
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