The Effect of Emotional Labor on Presenteeism of Chinese Nurses in Tertiary-Level Hospitals: The Mediating Role of Job Burnout

Abstract

Background: Employees who are physically present but work insufficiently because of illness are deemed as having presenteeism. In the health care setting, the issue has taken on greater importance because of the impairment of the physical and mental health of nurses and the nursing safety of the patients. According to the Job Demand-Resource Model, burnout may link emotional labor with presenteeism. Thus, this study analyzed the role of burnout as a mediating factor between the three types of emotional labor strategies and presenteeism among nurses in tertiary-level hospitals.Methods: A cross-sectional study of 1,038 nurses from six Chinese hospitals was conducted. The questionnaires, including the 14-item emotional labor strategies scale, 22-item Maslach Burnout Inventory scale, 6-item Stanford Presenteeism Scale, and items about demographic characteristics and work-related factors, were used to collect data. A multivariable linear regression was used to predict work-related factors and investigate the correlation of emotional labor, burnout, and presenteeism. The structural equation model was implemented to test the mediating effects of job burnout.Results: The results of the study showed that the average presenteeism score of the participants was 14.18 (4.33), which is higher than in Spanish, Portuguese, and Brazilian nurses. Presenteeism was explained by 22.8% of the variance in the final model in multivariable linear regression (P < 0.01). Presenteeism was found to be positively correlated with surface acting, emotionally expressed demands, deep acting, emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and low personal accomplishment (P < 0.01). Notably, presenteeism was negatively correlated with deep acting (P < 0.01). In addition, burnout partially mediated the correlation between emotionally expressed demands, deep acting, and presenteeism with a mediatory effect of 24 and 63.31% of the total effect. Burnout completely mediated the association between surface acting and presenteeism, a mediating effect of 86.44% of the total effect.Conclusions: The results of this study suggested that different emotional labor strategies affect presenteeism, either directly or indirectly. Nursing managers should intervene to reduce presenteeism by improving the ability of the nurses to manage emotions, thereby alleviating burnout.

Relationship between emotional labor and sense of career success among community nurses in China, Beijing: A cross-sectional study based on latent class analysis

“…In particular, item 10 (“I work at developing the feeling inside of me that I need to show to customers”) showed the highest score. Most nurses agreed they overcame negative emotions at work, got along with others in a friendly way, and used deep acting emotional labor strategies, which means to keep inner feelings consistent with their displayed expression, instead of fake acting at work [ 49 ]. They may excel at actively regulating internal emotions and actively change to promote self-action, resulting in behavior consistent with organizational expectations [ 50 ].…”

Mediating role of emotional labour strategy in the association between patient/visitor incivility and nurses’ fatigue: a cross-sectional study

“…For example, we replaced ‘customers’ with ‘patients’. The Chinese Emotional Labour Scale is widely used by people from all walks of life and has high reliability and validity 26 27. In this study, Cronbach’s alpha coefficients for the SA, DA and NA subscales were 0.88, 0.79 and 0.89, respectively.…”

A study on occupational stress, mental health and impact on work capacity of biosafety laboratory workers in China

“…Although occupational stress and anxiety cannot cause occupational diseases by speci c factors such as physical and chemical, there are non-speci c ways of damage to the body, such as increased absenteeism, reduced work capacity, and unexpected medical incidents [36,37] .The median and 25th and 75th percentile job competency scores of Xinjiang biosafety laboratory staff in this study were 39.0 (36.0, 42.0) points. The general characteristics and occupational characteristics were set as confounders by propensity score matching, and the results after eliminating the confounders showed that there was an effect of anxiety and occupational stress on work ability, and the prevalence of poor work ability in the anxiety group was more than twice as high as that in the no-anxiety group.…”