Impact of Surface and Deep Acting Emotional Labor on Emotional Dissonance among Ambulatory Care Nurses

ABSTRACT

Background@#Ambulatory care represents the first point of contact between the patient and the hospital.Kindness is strongly emphasized for ambulatory care nurses in customer-centered medical services. The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship among surface acting, deep acting, and emotional dissonance of emotional labor and to identify the influencing factors on emotional dissonance of ambulatory care nurses in a tertiary hospital. @*Methods@#This study is a correlational study. The data was collected using emotional labor scales from 163 nurses in March 2017. @*Results@#The surface acting, deep acting of emotional labor, and emotional dissonance were 3.71±0.69, 3.76±0.57, and 3.36±0.90 respectively in the ambulatory care nurses. The result of the multiple regressions indicates that surface (β=0.77,P<0.001) and deep acting (β=0.12, P=0.009) of emotional labor predict 67.6% (F=188.99,P<0.001) in emotional dissonance of ambulatory care nurses. @*Conclusions@#To improve emotional dissonance for ambulatory care nurses, it is necessary to develop and utilize emotional labor management program and effective emotional labor management.