Emotion work and burnout: cross-sectional study of nurses and physicians in Hungary

Aim

To investigate predictors of occupational burnout, such as emotion work, among health care workers and compare the frequencies of burnout and emotion work in nurses and physicians.

Method

A cross-sectional survey was conducted in 2007 and 2008 among 80 physicians and 76 nurses working in a variety of health care settings in Hungary. The survey contained sociodemographic questions and work- and health-related questions from, respectively, the Maslach Burnout Inventory-Human Services Survey and the Hungarian version of the Frankfurt Emotion Work Scale. To identify the dimensions of emotion work associated with burnout, linear regression analyses were carried out. To analyze differences in burnout and emotion work between nurses and physicians, independent t tests were used.

Results

Nurses reported significantly higher emotional dissonance and fewer regulation possibilities, such as interaction and emotion control, than physicians. However, no differences were found in the level or frequency of burnout. Nurses had fewer regulation requirements regarding sensitivity and sympathy. Linear regression analyses showed that emotional dissonance for emotional exhaustion (β = 0.401) and display of negative emotions for depersonalization (β = 0.332) were the strongest predictors of burnout.

Conclusion

The factors that should be taken into account when developing prevention and intervention programs differ for nurses and physicians. In nurses, the focus should be on stressors and emotional dissonance, while in physicians it should be on work requirements and display and regulation of negative emotions.During the last decade, the topic of emotion work has gained a much greater significance in organizational and health psychology. As defined by Zapf et al, emotion work occurs when employees are required by the employer to regulate their emotions in order to display appropriate emotions to the client (1). Emotion work determines the quality of social interaction between the caregiver and client. Action theory distinguishes 3 aspects of emotion work requirements: regulation requirements, regulation possibilities, and regulation problems. Regulation requirements (display of emotions) are related to properties of the hierarchical-sequential organization of action and constitute the complexity of decision. Regulation possibilities refer to the concept of control. Regulation problems, also known as emotional dissonance, are the discord between felt and expressed emotions and occur when stressors disturb the regulation of action (1,2). Current burnout research is greatly facilitated by theories explaining work stress (3-6). Using Karasek’s job demands control model, the research group of LeBlanc and DeJonge investigated emotional job demands (3-5). It was also found that health care workers are at high risk for emotional exhaustion resulting from interaction with clients (6,7).Burnout is a syndrome of emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and reduced personal accomplishment occurring in people-oriented and service work (8). Emotional exhaustion refers to feelings of being depleted of one’s emotional resources. Depersonalization is a negative and cynical attitude and behavior toward clients. Reduced personal accomplishment is the self-perception of a decline in one’s own competence and self-efficacy. Burnout has most often been studied in caregiving professionals, such as clinicians, psychologists, social workers, and nurses (9-17). Indeed, several studies have directly measured the emotional aspects of job demands dealing either with emotion work (18-20) or burnout (21-24). However, few studies investigating the relationship between burnout and emotion work have been conducted in the nursing and health care profession, particularly in Hungary and Eastern Europe (25). The differences in burnout and emotion work between nurses and physicians have been studied in the Netherlands, Germany, and Spain (3-5,14,26). Some studies have suggested that physicians experience more burnout than nurses (14,16), while others have suggested the opposite (17).Recently, burnout has been conceptualized as a psychological syndrome that takes place in response to chronic interpersonal stressors on the job (6). According to Zapf, burnout makes individuals no longer able to adequately manage their emotions while interacting with clients (27). According to the model of emotion work by Grandey (28), antecedents of emotion regulation are the situational variables, eg, interaction between the caregiver and client.A relationship between burnout and emotion work has recently been found in the health care setting in Western European countries (3,4,29-31). Health care professionals, especially nurses, are at high risk of burnout because their job requires a high level of emotion work (18-20,32,33). Most studies have found a positive relationship between emotion work and burnout, suggesting that emotional dissonance may predict emotional exhaustion and depersonalization (25,34). Demerouti (35) argues that contribution of job demands and resources to explaining burnout may vary across occupations because these features differ across occupations. Burnout literature usually focuses on general variables that predict burnout and does not distinguish between predictors across health professions (6,8). Thus, we hypothesized that differences in emotion work can be detected between nurses and physicians, although the predictors of the syndrome do not vary.This study assesses the relationships between burnout and emotion work in a sample of Hungarian health care professionals and investigates how emotional job demands relate to the frequency of burnout.