Surface Acting and Deep Acting: Emotional Labor and Burnout in Firefighters

For Submission to the APA NIOSH Work and Stress Conference, May 2011, Orlando Florida (October 11, 2010)

Marnie Dobson1,2, BongKyoo Choi1,2, Peter Schnall1,2, Leslie Israel1, Dean Baker1

1 Center for Occupational and Environmental Health, University of California Irvine, USA.
2 Center for Social Epidemiology, Los Angeles, California, USA

Objective: To investigate possible differential effects of two types of emotional labor such as surface acting and deep acting on burnout among firefighters.

Background: As first responders, firefighters must manage traumatic scenarios which require emotional labor, a psychosocial stressor known to be related to burnout in human service work. Emotional labor, a concept developed by sociologist Arlie Hochschild, refers to the regulation of emotions working people perform as part of their job or to promote organizational goals. There are several types of emotional labor potentially applicable to firefighters as human service workers. The literature suggests that professional human service workers, such as nurses, social workers, or firefighters/paramedics, are more likely to “deep act” when performing emotional labor since they internalize the appropriate display of emotion as part of their professional role. Those firefighters more likely to “surface act” are more likely to experience burnout, while “deep acting” may be associated with lower burnout. We will also investigate whether reporting specialized training as helpful to the management of emotions while in the field could modify the association between emotional labor and burnout.

Click here for a pdf of the full Abstract

ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS FROM MR. GEORGE TACKES, ASSOCIATE EDITOR OF RPM MAGAZINE BY DR. KAREN BELKIC

ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS FROM MR. GEORGE TACKES, ASSOCIATE EDITOR OF RPM MAGAZINE
BY DR. KAREN BELKIC

July 2000 ( Please note for each question there is first a short answer, followed by a fairly detailed explanation.)

1. Neurocardiac mechanisms of heart disease risk among professional drivers

a) Definition of Professional Drivers and what do they all have in common?
We define professional drivers as those workers whose main job is to operate a motor vehicle in traffic conditions. This includes chauffeurs, bus, truck, tram, trolley, taxi and ambulance drivers.

Explanation:
While each of these groups has its own distinguishing characteristics and problems, they share common features that are critically important stressors. Namely, all professional drivers perform what we call “threat-avoidant vigilant activity” where they must maintain a high level of attention, in order to follow a large number of information sources simultaneously to which they must rapidly respond, whereby a momentary lapse or wrong decision can have serious, potentially fatal consequences. The burden is heaviest upon their visual systems, but also they must be keep their hearing and somatosensory systems on alert. This work is performed while seated in a relatively fixed position in a confined space.

Eating less salt doesn’t cut heart risks: study I Reuters

Is nothing sacred? For 100 years now it has been gospel that salt plays an important role in the etiology of ESSENTIAL Hypertension, despite the fact that the evidence for the role of salt has always been contradictory (e.g., feeding people unlimited amounts of salt doesn’t increase bp as our bodies have enormous ability to excrete salt in the urine). This article provides further evidence that the role in sodium in the etiology and treatment of hypertension is even more problematic than previously thought.  The key sentence from below of their results  “participants with the lowest salt intake had the highest rate of death from heart disease during the follow up (4 percent), and people who ate the most salt had the lowest (less than 1 percent).”

Working Hours and CVD Risk – Some new findings

An interesting article authored by Mika Kivimaki and colleagues using data from the Whitehall Study* appeared in the Annals of Internal Medicine**.

The authors report, that above and beyond the traditional Framingham Heart Risk score, that working long work days  (beyond a normal 8 hour work day) increases the risk of a coronary event. The risk increases stepwise up to 11 hours. This finding is an interesting echo of a study published by Haiou Yang, myself and several colleagues in the fall of 2006 at the University of California at Irvine. Our study found a relationship between long working hours during the week (increasing #’s of hours of work per week > 40 per week) were associated with an increase in self-reported hypertension in the CHIS (Calif Health Interview Survey) conducted by UCLA.

Readers should be aware that the Framingham risk score is derived by adding up the total risk due to exposure to the “traditional” risk factors for heart disease in particular weight, smoking, cholesterol, blood pressure and diabetes. Both of these articles are suggesting that there are other factors such as longer working hours that above and beyond traditional risk factors are contributing to the likelihood of having a heart attack.

Also I want to point out that the design of both of these studies does not rule out the possibility that even an 8 hour work day or a 40 hour work week may contribute to the development of heart disease. Both of these studies compared increased hours to either the typical work day or typical work week. Unfortunately, there were no subjects available working less than 8 hours a day in the Whitehall study or 35 or less hours in the CHIS study for comparison.

Not only are long work days and work weeks associated with heart disease but there is accumulating evidence that a number of other organizational and psychosocial work related factors are playing an important role in the development of hypertension and heart disease.  For much more on this topic stay tuned for further blogs or pick up a copy of our book “Unhealthy Work: causes, consequences and cures” published in 2009 by Baywood Publishers.

Readers should note that the Whitehall study has access to data on other work related risk factors including psychosocial variables such as job strain which were not included in the analyses done in this paper. It will be interesting to see future studies where all of these variables are included.

*The original Whitehall Study investigated social determinants of health, specifically the cardiorespiratory disease prevalenceand mortality rates among British male civil servants between the ages of 20 and 64. The initial study, the Whitehall I Study, examined over 18,000 male civil servants, and was conducted over a period of ten years, beginning in 1967. A second phase, theWhitehall II Study, examined the health of 10,308 civil servants aged 35 to 55, of whom two thirds were men and one third women. A long-term follow-up of study subjects from the first two phases is ongoing.

** Article appeared in the news this week on April 5th 2011 based on the report in the Annals of Internal Medicine.

30th International Congress on Occupational Health

Occupational Health for All: From Research to Practice (visit website)

March 18 – 23, 2012

Cancun, Mexico

New Work and Family Researchers Network

We wanted to be sure that you have heard about the new Work and Family Researchers Network (WFRN), formerly the Sloan Work and Family Research Network.  As you may know, the Sloan Network has been the premier online destination for work and family information for the past 14 years. In November 2010, we received a final grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation to create this new organization.

To learn more and stay updated, please visit our interim website at: http://workfamily.sas.upenn.edu/index.html

ISEQH 6th International Conference: Making Policy a Health Equity Building Process

ISEQH 6th International Conference: Making Policy a Health Equity Building Process

September 26 – September 28, 2011

Catagena de Indias, Colombia

APA/NIOSH 9th International Conference

Work, Stress, and Health 2011: Work and Well-Being in an Economic Context

May 19 – 22, 2011

DoubleTree Hotel in Orlando, Florida

20th International Symposium on Shiftwork and Working Time

Biological mechanisms and risk management in the 24h society

June 28 – July 1, 2011

Stockholm, Sweden.

The 6th ICOH International Conference on Work Environment and Cardiovascular Diseases – Tokyo, Japan, March 27-30, 2013

Dear Colleagues, Dear Friends,

The ICOH Scientific Committee of Cardiology in Occupational Health has great pleasure in inviting you to attend the 6th ICOH International Conference on Work Environment and Cardiovascular Diseases, which will be held on 27-30 March 2013 in Tokyo, Japan. The Conference will follow the previous and highly successful International ICOH Conferences on Work Environment and Cardiovascular Diseases which were held in Cracow in 2009, Newport Beach in 2005, Dusseldorf in 2002, Tel Aviv 1998 and Copenhagen in 1994. The Conference will be an excellent opportunity for exchange of scientific evidence and good practices by occupational physicians, cardiologists, cardiac rehabilitation specialists, sociologists, psychologists and policy makers in occupational health. I do hope that you will join us for this important Conference.

I am also pleased to inform you that the conference website

http://www.icoh2013.com