Factors That Influence Perceived Organizational Support for Emotional Labor of Chinese Medical Personnel in Hubei

At the outbreak of coronavirus disease in Wuhan, China, 42,322 medical personnel from other provinces and municipalities in China volunteered to rush to Hubei to assist their colleagues. Their all-out efforts contributed to Hubei finally winning the fight to prevent and control the pandemic. The aim of this study is to explore the influence of perceived organizational support on the emotional labor of medical personnel in Hubei Province. A group of 170 medical personnel from (tertiary) hospitals who participated in the pandemic aid operation in Hubei completed self-administered questionnaires, including the perceived organizational support scale, emotional labor scale, and professional identity scale. This study used Pearson's correlation in SPSS to analyze the three variables of organizational support, emotional labor, and professional identity. Organizational support and emotional labor (r = 0.443, P < 0.01), organizational support and professional identity (r = 0.631, P < 0.01), and emotional labor and occupational identity (r = 0.511, P < 0.01) showed a significant positive correlation. The bootstrapping mediating effect test was used to determine the overall mediating effect of occupational identity. Occupational identity was a complete mediating effect between organizational support and emotional labor. The results show that a strong sense of organizational support can promote higher emotional labor among medical workers in Hubei Province. A strong sense of organizational support will also promote a stronger professional identity; further, a strong professional identity completely mediates the effect of perceived organizational support on emotional labor. These results infer that in emergency medical and health services, medical personnel can realize a high sense of organizational support, which could enhance their professional identity; this enables them to combine their professional goals with organizational goals more actively and to finally pay higher emotional labor to achieve organizational goals.

Automated summary

The study revealed that in Hubei Province, a strong sense of organizational support can enhance medical personnel's emotional labor and professional identity, with the latter acting as a complete mediator between organizational support and emotional labor. This suggests that during emergency medical services, a high level of organizational support can empower medical workers to actively align their professional goals with organizational goals, leading to greater emotional labor output for achieving organizational objectives.