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Changing faces: nurses as emotional jugglers
Author(s) -
Bolton Sharon
Publication year - 2001
Publication title -
sociology of health and illness
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.146
H-Index - 97
eISSN - 1467-9566
pISSN - 0141-9889
DOI - 10.1111/1467-9566.00242
Subject(s) - emotional labor , face (sociological concept) , set (abstract data type) , nursing , presentation (obstetrics) , work (physics) , psychology , emotion work , applied psychology , social psychology , sociology , medicine , computer science , social science , mechanical engineering , engineering , radiology , programming language
Nursing has long been distinguished as an occupation requiring extensive amounts of ‘emotion work’. Various studies highlight the importance of a nurse’s ability to manage emotion and present the desired demeanour in a number of health care settings. This paper adds to the existing understanding of the emotional elements of nursing work and proposes that Goffman’s (1959, 1961, 1967) insights into the ‘presentation of self’ may be a useful approach to recognising a nurse’s ability to present many ‘faces’. Set against the backdrop of structural changes affecting the British public sector services, and using qualitative data collected from a group of nurses working in a National Health Service trust hospital, it will be shown how nurses are able to juggle the emotional demands made of them whilst still presenting an acceptable face.