Regulation of team emotion – trauma nurses’ emotional labor

Abstract

Team members engage in emotional labor – display of desired emotions. Team emotional regulation is the phenomena where organizational norms are appropriated by team members to express some emotions and suppress others. But how does emotional regulation and emotional communication influence teamwork? Emotion has been intensely researched in the organizational sciences, but more research is needed at team-level. Particularly, work is needed on how safety critical teams deal with emotionally stressing events. This paper is a case study of emotional team regulation and emotional labor in the (emergency medical) trauma team. The trauma team is an interdisciplinary medical action team dealing with severely injured patients. Trauma work induces in non-professionals various strong emotions such as stress, compassion, or contempt. Medical professionals are expected to deal with traumas in a professional way. When conflicts between team members occur they are handled outside the trauma room. The study identified two analytic categories: The intra-team level (between team members) and extra-team level (towards patient or family members) where emotional regulation and emotional work is enacted. Emotional regulation functions to ensure professionalism relating to teamwork, team communication, and the regulation of team members’ emotions according to safety organizational ideals. It is argued that emotional work preconditions teamwork by framing norms about conflict solution and communication in and about the trauma patient. Emotional work is unevenly distributed in the team and hierarchy organizes emotional work.