Relationships among Emotional Labor, Fatigue, and Musculoskeletal Pain in Nurses

This study examined emotional labor, fatigue, and musculoskeletal pain in hospital nurses. The study sample included 235 hospital nurses. The data were collected by questionnaire and analyzed with descriptive statistics, t-test, ANOVA, Scheffe test, Pearson's correlation coefficients, and multiple regression.The average emotional labor score was 3.27, and of fatigue was 2.04. The musculoskeletal pain score was 4.43. Emotional labor and fatigue are significantly positively associated with musculoskeletal pain(r=.180, p=.006; r=.278, p<.001). Emotional labor was positively associated with the degree of fatigue(r=.353, p<.001). The significant predictors of musculoskeletal pain for nurses were physical fatigue(β=.324, p<.001) and gender(female)(β=.171, p=.009), explaining 13.7% of the variance in musculoskeletal pain(F=16.271, p<.001). The results suggest that engaging in emotional labor related to nursing tasks increases the risks of fatigue and musculoskeletal pain. Therefore, it is important to develop a management program to relieve the emotional labor, fatigue, and prevent musculoskeletal pain for clinical nurses.