Nurses’ emotion (dis/)regulation, flexibility and compassion satisfaction: an empirical study

It is not surprising that nurses are in need of skills and competences for understanding how to handle with emotions, i.e., emotion regulation. Structurally, the healthcare context exposes its nursing staff to constant and continuous potential traumatic events characterized by emotional activation. Such an emotional activation implies potential psychological risks with consequences both at the level of mental health and nurses’ professional satisfaction. This provides impetus for gaining empirical knowledge based on which tailoring interventions for promoting emotion regulation among nurses. Following this impetus, the paper presents a cross-sectional study meant to gain an empirical understanding of nurse emotional experience. Six hundred and thirty-seven nurses from local hospitals took part in the study by filling an online questionnaire comprising self-report measures on emotion regulation (Regulation of Emotion System Scale - RESS), emotion flexibility (Emotion Regulation Flexibility Questionnaire – ERFQ), difficulties in emotion regulation (Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale - DERS) and job satisfaction (Compassion Satisfaction Scale – CSS). In addition, the present study included tailored scenarios to map emotional responses of nurses in which potential traumatic events were presented. Descriptive and inferential analysis present how nurses employ different strategies to regulate their emotions. Nurses reported to use mostly rumination, reappraisal, distraction and emotional expressive engagement. The main difficulty reported by nurses is represented by emotional awareness while emotion flexibility seems to represent a crucial dimension for favouring emotional regulation and job satisfaction. Based on this result, the study presents how tailored interventions (e.g., role playing) can represent potential interventions for improving emotion regulation. Vistas for research and practice are discussed.