PRACTICE ENVIRONMENT AND COMMUTING STRESS AS PREDICTORS OF EMOTIONAL LABOUR AMONG NURSES IN IBADAN, OYO STATE

Abstract

Nursing has been described as one of the most stressful professions considering their exposure to emotional demands from their patients, and prolonged working duration. This study examined practice environment and commuting stress as predictors of Emotional Labour in Ibadan, Oyo State. This study employed ex-post facto design, purposive sampling technique was used in selecting 301 nurses in Ibadan, Oyo State, with participants’ ages ranging between 17 and 64, and a mean age of 32.93±10.18 years. A 61-item self-report questionnaire comprising socio-demographics, practice environment (?=.95), commuting stress (?=.80) and emotional labour (?=.87) was administered. Data collected were analyzed using descriptive statistics, Pearson r, hierarchical multiple regression and ANOVA analysis. After statistically controlling for sex, age and practice experience, the results revealed that psychosocial factors significantly and jointly predicted Emotional labour and its components. Furthermore, age, practice experience, participation in the centre affairs, the nursing foundation for quality of care, adequate human resources, Nurses-physician relationship and commuting stress independently predicted nurse’s emotional labour and its components (surface action, deep acting, naturally felt emotion and emotional termination) More also, marital status predict bullying behaviour. Finally, psychosocial factors are important joint predictors of emotional labour and its components. It's recommended that nurses should be more involved in the hospital policy-making and decision process, and the latest hospital equipment should be provided. Furthermore, nurse hostels in the hospital vicinity and public transport should be provided to reduce commuting stress.   Keywords:           Emotional labour, Practice environment, Commuting stress