‘What’s Up Doc?’ An Exploratory Study Investigating the Emotional Labour and its Potential Impact on the Emotional Wellbeing on General Practitioners in a Primary Care Setting

General Practitioners examine, diagnose and advise unwell patients, they also provide emotional labour during their patient interactions. The purpose of this study was to explore the emotional labour that General Practitioners experience during their patient interactions and to understand the impact that it has on their emotional wellbeing. The study utilised the Conservation of Resources theory (Höbfoll, 1989), and the Job-Demand Resource theory (Demerouti and Bakker, 2011) to examine the links between emotional labour and job demands with emotional wellbeing. This study conducted 16 semi-structured interviews with General Practitioners in a Primary Care setting and found that emotional labour does have a negative impact on their emotional wellbeing, and that surface acting was the preferred method of emotional labour, as deep acting was found to increase burnout as it was more exhausting to achieve. The study also found that job demands, and emotional labour together exacerbate emotional wellbeing and burnout and is linked with General Practitioners intentions to leave the profession entirely. The study has also highlighted the lack of awareness that exists about emotional labour and well-being