Print This PostI recently read an excellent article on emotional labour and how it relates to dementia research by Catherine Quinn and colleagues. As the authors explain, emotional labour is a concept described by Horchschild in 2012, relating to the management of emotions within the workplace; specifically, managing another person’s emotions whilst striving to regulate your own. The authors synthesise existing literature with their own experiences, present reflective case studies and outline recommendations for researchers. I found the article highly relatable as I am sure other dementia researchers do/will. The concept of emotional labour seems to be about interaction at its heart. I have been reflecting on how emotional labour can become sharply relevant during the recruitment phase of a research project, when interactions between people with dementia, carers and researchers (at this point strangers) can be particularly emotionally loaded.
During recruitment, researchers are often feeling the pressure of timelines and recruitment targets and may have doubts about whether their research will be successful. Potential participants might be feeling vulnerable, let down by the health and social care system, and cynical about the difference research could make. Already there are lots of emotions swirling about. How can we manage the emotions of others whilst regulating our own?
Managing the emotions of others
First contacts might be on the phone, where people with dementia and carers are calling in response to receiving study information, or in person, perhaps following an exchange of emails about potential participation. Sometimes receiving study information out of the blue triggers feelings of abandonment post-diagnosis for people with dementia and/or carers, and initial conversations are a chance for them to share their distress and sometimes anger. For potential participants, interactions with researchers are often highly valued as a rare opportunity to talk about their lives and their challenges. They may feel a strong sense of connection, and hope that the researcher will be able to provide long-term support, not appreciating the boundaries between research and care.
I think it helps me to enter into each of these initial interactions accepting that my main role might be to listen and empathise, no matter how keen and prepared I am to explain and answer specific questions about the research and arrange participation.
Having a distress protocol is important, including a list of local and national support services to share with people. Having the study safeguarding protocol to hand is also essential. It is important to display unconditional positive regard e.g., by validating peoples’ experiences, and to carefully judge when to re-focus the conversation on the research itself. Faced with understandable cynicism about the value of research, I have found it helps to develop a way of explaining the topic, by acknowledging that it may seem like a tiny piece of the jigsaw, but it is a powerful piece, that could lead to big changes in care and support.
Regulating our own emotions
During the types of initial meetings described above I have variously felt anxious, upset, threatened, worried that the research is actually a load of rubbish, and guilty that I cannot offer solutions or offer ongoing support. Masking such emotions is part of the work of a researcher, although how do we know that we have successfully done that? Maybe some of these feelings leak through regardless. Either way, the mental effort involved can lead to feelings of exhaustion. Personality type might be relevant. On the Highly Sensitive Person scale, if this is not straying too much into pop psychology, I’m borderline. I cry easily when watching emotive films or reading books and can feel other peoples’ emotions very strongly. Such personality types might be particularly attracted to research in the field of healthcare and support.
Support for researchers
Recommendations outlined by Quinn et al (2024) include spacing out meetings with participants and avoiding such meetings last thing in the day, so that there is time for debriefing and support from colleagues. This is good advice, and I am my own worst enemy, because I rarely reach out to one of my lone-working buddies after an emotionally difficult encounter. I deal with the emotions myself, feel better, and made a note to bring it up at a future meeting as an interesting incident. I have however supported more junior colleagues in phone conversations immediately after visits that have left these colleagues feeling uneasy and upset. Emotional encounters are not unusual, and probably have a cumulative effect on researchers, so we should find time to discuss them, explore whether we did the right thing and plan how we are going to look after ourselves. It is not always easy to space out recruitment encounters or avoid them at the end of the day/during non-work hours, as the people we may want to recruit have lives to fit us into and we have the tension of wanting to make sure we hit our recruitment targets.
We should open the conversation about emotional labour in our teams, including sharing recruitment experiences. We should talk about how we should prepare for initial encounters with potential participants, lone working policies and how well they meet our safety needs, healthy boundaries and supervision. Funding applications should build in resources for peer visits, so that researchers have immediate support. Importantly, we need to make sure we have distress protocols that cover researcher as well as participant needs.
Dr Sarah Griffiths
Authors
Dr Sarah Griffiths has a background in speech and language therapy and has been involved in aphasia research. For 14 years she was a senior lecturer on a BSc Speech and Language Therapy course at Plymouth Marjon University. Now Sarah is is a Senior Research Fellow in the Centre for Ageing Population Studies, Research Department of Primary Care and Population Health at University College London.
Dementia Researcher
NIHR
Dr Anna Volkmer