Relationship between emotional labor and sense of career success among community nurses in China, Beijing: A cross-sectional study based on latent class analysis

BACKGROUND: This study investigated different patterns of emotional labor among community nurses in China and analyzed the relationships between the sense of career success and emotional labor. METHODS: A total of 385 community nurses from Beijing participated in this investigation. Latent class analysis was used to identify meaningful subgroups of participants, and analysis of variance was used to analyze relationships between emotional labor classes and the sense of career success. RESULTS: Emotional labor among community nursing staff in China was divided into three latent classes: active (n = 90, 25.6%), apathetic (n = 65, 18.5%), and moderate (n = 197, 55.9%). The active emotional labor classes had significantly higher career success (p<0.05). The “gaining recognition” dimension showed significant differences across the three classes. CONCLUSION: Our findings suggested managers to implement a variety of measures to strengthen interventions for employees’ emotional labor that are targeted to incentive mechanisms, which will improve nurses’ sense of career success.