Effects of Workplace Ostracism on Burnout among Nursing Staff during the COVID-19 Pandemic, Mediated by Emotional Labor

This study investigated the effects of workplace ostracism on emotional labor and burnout among current nursing staff during the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as the relationship between the surface acting and deep acting of emotional labor as the mediators of workplace ostracism and burnout. The sample for this study consisted of 250 nursing staff recruited from Taiwanese medical institutions, and the questionnaire was divided into two stages. The first stage included questions about ostracism and personal data, and then two months later the same respondents completed part two of the questionnaire regarding emotional labor and burnout, which solved the problem of common-method variance (CMV). The results of this study indicate that ostracism had a positive and significant effect on burnout and surface acting, but its negative effect on deep acting was not supported. While surface acting showed partial mediation between ostracism and burnout, deep acting did not have a significant mediating effect between ostracism and burnout. These results can provide a reference for practice and researchers.