Emotional Labor, Physical Labor and Mental Labor of Hospice Care Nurses: A Mixed-method Study

Emotional Labour, Mental Labour, Self-efficacy and Potential Influencing Factors of Hospice Care Nurses During COVID-19: A Mixed-method Study

Hospice care is a nurse-led multidisciplinary team care that provides physical, mental, and social care to end-of-life patients. According to the WHO, the role of hospice nurses is addressing suffering involves taking care of issues beyond physical symptoms, to support patients and their caregivers. Different from other disease care, hospice nurses face end-of-life patients and their families. As the primary nursing contact of a dying family, hospice nurses have a more intense and complex emotional experience. In China, with the improvement of human rights protection awareness, the nurse-patient relationship is particularly important, and the social requirements for nursing workers are also getting higher and higher. In addition, hospice nurses not only provide physical and psychological care to patients, but also provide comprehensive care to families of end-of-life patients. It is not just the mental work of learning expertise and dealing with emergency situations, and the physical labor of caring for large numbers of patients; but also requires emotional labor that has rarely been recognized before. When facing end-of-life patients and their families, it is particularly important to express appropriate emotions and pay emotional labor.

Study Overview

• Status: Recruiting
• Conditions: Hospitalism
• Intervention / Treatment: Other: interview

• Study Type: Observational
• Enrollment (Anticipated): 200

Contacts and Locations

Study Locations

• China
  • Jiangsu
    • Nanjing, Jiangsu, China, 210029
      • Recruiting
      • Wu Ye
      • Contact: Yuxi Zhang, master; Phone Number: 13770653609; Email: zhangyuxi830@163.com

Participation Criteria

Eligibility Criteria

• Ages Eligible for Study: 18 years to 65 years (Adult, Older Adult)
• Accepts Healthy Volunteers: No
• Genders Eligible for Study: All

• Sampling Method: Non-Probability Sample

Study Population

Nurses working as registered nurses for 6 months or more.

Description

Inclusion Criteria:

• The inclusion criteria were nurses working as registered nurses for 6 months or more.

Exclusion Criteria:

• Nurses who were not directly involved in patient care (e.g., central sterile supply department nurses), and intern nurses were excluded.

Study Plan

How is the study designed?

Design Details

• Observational Models: Other
• Time Perspectives: Cross-Sectional

Number of groups / cohorts

1

Cohorts and Interventions

Group / Cohort

Intervention / Treatment

hospice care nurses; nurses who have worked in a palliative care or hospice unit

Other: interview; The first phase included a qualitative study. We conducted a qualitative phenomenological method to better explicate and understand palliative care nurses' emotional labor experiences, as well as the dilemmas and solutions they encounter when physical, mental, and emotional labor intertwine at work. In the early stage, we compiled an interview outline by a written qualitative meta-analysis about the emotional labor, and added the contents in the interview outline according to the actual situation in the later interview process.

What is the study measuring?

Primary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure	Measure Description	Time Frame
Chinese version scale of emotional labor	The ELS for nurses was developed by Hong and Kim (Hong & Kim, 2018), which is a 16-item scale using a five-point Likert scale ranging from 1 (not at all) to 5 (very true), with a total score ranging from 16 to 80. Higher scores indicate higher levels of emotional labor.	1 day
Depression, Anxiety, and Stress Scale -21 (DASS-21)	Chinese version of DASS-21 has a total of 21 items and measures three negative emotional experiences of depression, anxiety and stress (Jiang et al., 2021).	1 day

Collaborators and Investigators

• Sponsor: Nanjing University of Traditional Chinese Medicine

Study record dates

Study Major Dates

• Study Start (Actual): February 1, 2022
• Primary Completion (Actual): October 30, 2022
• Study Completion (Anticipated): November 30, 2022

Study Registration Dates

• First Submitted: November 1, 2022
• First Submitted That Met QC Criteria: November 1, 2022
• First Posted (Actual): November 8, 2022

Study Record Updates

• Last Update Posted (Estimate): December 6, 2022
• Last Update Submitted That Met QC Criteria: December 2, 2022
• Last Verified: December 1, 2022

More Information

Terms related to this study

• Keywords: palliative care; hospice; advanced cancer; nurse
• Other Study ID Numbers: NMU22_1101

Plan for Individual participant data (IPD)

• Plan to Share Individual Participant Data (IPD)?: No

Drug and device information, study documents

• Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated drug product: No
• Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated device product: No
• product manufactured in and exported from the U.S.: No