Special Educational Strategies for Nursing Staff

Acting emotionally has been the explicit target for many service professions. However, in the case of nursing, the concept of emotional labour remains implicit and elaborated only when the adverse effects of emotional labour have already occurred. Since nursing work involves the effective management of emotions, it is an imperative to openly incorporate “emotional labour” in the nursing curricula. The rationale that underlies such proposition is that by preparing students for the emotional aspects of their future work, we equip them with techniques that will minimise the exhausting effects of emotional labour, we define more accurately their roles and hence teach them how to provide better services. Though the focus of this paper is on nursing education and practice, the concepts that are addressed can be applied in many professions, including sports management. The aim of the paper is to demonstrate the importance of education for the preparation of students for the emotional aspects of nursing work and to propose a special educational framework that places the emphasis on the emotional/ social skills that nursing students shoulddevelop during training and which will help them in managing their emotions and hence limit the effects of emotional labour.