Emotional labour in medical professions. Review of literature from the period 2010–2017

Abstract

Introduction: The contact which occurs between a medical professional and a patient involves the occurrence of phenomena concerning the control of emotions, called emotional labour. The aim of the paper was to review specialist literature relating to emotional labour present in medical occupations. Material and method: With the use of EBSCO, Medline, ScienceDirect, Ovid MEDLINE databases and the PubMed search engine, relevant English-language full text articles published in 2010– 2017 were selected. Results: Sixty-two articles were selected that complied with the assumed criteria for the description of the issue. The articles concerned four thematic groups: emotional labour occurrence in various medical professions, the intrapersonal aspects of emotional labour, the interpersonal and organisational aspects of emotional labour and the negative consequences of emotional labour. Conclusions: The number of review and source articles confirming the presence of emotional labour in medical professions is growing year by year. In the health care system, emotional labour is still not a widely acknowledged phenomenon, with hardly any specialist training courses aimed at employees, and few organisational changes that would favour constructive methods of copying with the negative consequences of emotional labour.