Abstract
The work performed by emergency service professionals often involves navigating situations where sickness, suicide attempts, acts of aggression, and sometimes death occur. In such situations, these professionals are expected to mask their genuine emotions. This is also referred to as emotional labour. With this study, I aimed to gain an in-depth understanding of how emergency service professionals experience emotional labour and whether this experience positively or negatively affects their psychological well-being.
I adopted a qualitative methodology, where I conducted semi-structured interviews with a purposive sample of 11 emergency service professionals: police officers (4), firefighters (4), and paramedics (3) in South Africa. Natural meaning units revealed six emerging themes: professionalism, emotional intelligence, coping mechanisms, emotional exhaustion, gratification, and psychological distress.
The findings suggest preventative interventions to mitigate the negative impact of emotional labour strategies on the psychological well-being of emergency service professionals.