Impact of nurses' emotional labour on job stress and emotional exhaustion amid COVID-19: The role of instrumental support and coaching leadership as moderators

Aim This study examines Pakistan nurses' emotional labour and stress in health care emergencies, specifically their emotional exhaustion and availability of support of organization and management to alleviate the effects. Background As COVID-19 pandemic has been declared a global outbreak and many countries have enacted medical emergencies, this has increased job demands and expected desired emotional expressions from frontline workers. Such high levels of job demand contribute to various stress reactions among employees. Methods Authors applied a longitudinal design, using an experimental approach, to collect data from 319 nurses serving in 107 government hospitals in Pakistan. The authors surveyed nurses at two time points with the interval of 3 months by using an online questionnaire tool. At one time, they asked nurses to report on emotional labour, stress and exhaustion. In the second phase, after providing supports (during interval phase) at different levels, the authors repeated the same scales from same participants in addition to instrumental support and coaching leadership. Data were processed using SPSS-Amos for elementary analysis and SPSS-process macro software for robustness and hypotheses testing. Results The findings indicate that job stress fully mediates the relationship between surface acting and emotional exhaustion in controlled phase and partially mediates in intervention phase. Furthermore, in intervention phase, instrumental support moderates and alleviates positive effects of emotional labour on job stress, and coaching leadership moderates and lessens positive effects of job stress on emotional exhaustion. Conclusion This research concludes that health care organizations can alleviate emotional exhaustion caused by emotional labour and job stress amid emergencies by providing support at different levels: organizational and managerial. However, the effectiveness of these supports depends on high to low levels. Implications for Nursing Management This study demonstrates that to handle and support emotional labour and job stress to avoid emotional exhaustion in health care emergencies, organizational supports matter. Support at organizational level can include instrumental support. At managerial level, holding a coaching leadership style can foster external facets of management while uplifting the internal support qualities of confidence and self-awareness that improve the individuals' ability to lead; work with paradox and uncertainty.

Automated summary

This study examines the emotional labor and stress of Pakistani nurses in healthcare emergencies, specifically focusing on emotional exhaustion and the availability of organizational and management support to alleviate these effects. The findings suggest that job stress plays a mediating role in the relationship between surface acting and emotional exhaustion. Additionally, instrumental support and coaching leadership were found to moderate and lessen the positive effects of emotional labor and job stress on emotional exhaustion.