There is a profound need to bridge the gap between medical and emotional aspects of care. The aim of this paper was to develop a health-care model of emotional labor that could be used to help health-care managers’ better deal with the causes and consequences of emotional labor for staff and patients. It has been shown that emotional labor is a crucial part of the role of many health care professionals, especially nurses, and that these skills are not adequately taught within health-care education programmers. Similarly, the stress and effects of mental health of emotional labor performance have also not been sufficiently acknowledged or addressed. Specific recommendations from this review include the following: The study of emotional labor should be widened to include other professions outside of nursing such as doctors, counselors, clinical psychologists and other health-care providers.

Emotional labor and emotion management should be formally recognized as a key skill in facilitating the patient journey and training, policy and education within health-care systems should reflect this recognition. . Emotional skills should be taught in innovative ways outside of the formal classroom setting and in small, appropriate groups encompassing reflective learning, mentor-led experiences and patient-centered sharing. Health-care professionals ought to be presented a training and education on coping with the effects to themselves of emotional labor performance both as part of initial entry-level training and as part of continuing professional development. . More research must be carried out to promote knowledge and awareness, particularly in identifying causes of emotional labor within health-care backgrounds and in discriminating the effects that different kinds of emotional labor performance might have.