Emotions in uniform: How nurses regulate emotion at work via emotional boundaries

Abstract

The management of emotions at work has been conceptualized in terms of its association with emotional inauthenticity and dissonance. In contrast, we integrate the idea of emotion regulation at work with basic strategic and adaptive functions of emotion, offering a new way of understanding how emotions can be harnessed for task achievement and personal development. Through a content analysis of interview data we examined how and why emotion regulation is carried out by employees, focusing on the in situ experiences of nurses. The manipulation of emotional boundaries, to create an emotional distance or connection with patients and their families, emerged as a nascent strategy to manage anticipated, evolving, and felt emotions. The emotional boundary perspective offers possibilities for knowledge development that are not rooted in assumptions about the authenticity of emotion or the professional self but that instead account for the dynamic, complex, multi-layered, and adaptive characteristics of emotion management.