Managing strong emotions : nurses’ recognition and responses to personal emotions when approaching parents with cancer and their dependent children

Abstract

Care for sick parents and their dependent children (<18 years) has become a pertinent issue in health care. Nurses play an important role in caring for parents with cancer as well as their children. By utilizing a constructivist grounded theory approach, the aim of this study was to expand the research-based knowledge of nurses’ experiences of personal emotions in this research field and to develop a subsequent explanatory theory extending the existing concept of emotional labor. Interviews with 12 nurses were conducted and analyzed. The nurses experienced this area of work as particularly emotionally challenging and attempted to manage personal emotions through regulating and processing strategies. Through this process, they sought for emotional strength by balancing their private lives and work lives to manage work-related emotions. An increased awareness of emotional labor may strengthen nurses’ emotional competence in nursing. Keywords: parental cancer, family, children, nursing, constructivist grounded theory, emotions, emotional labor, emotional competence, qualitative, interview, Norway, Europe

Managing strong emotions : nurses’ recognition and responses to personal emotions when approaching parents with cancer and their dependent children