Hee Jung Kim1, Min Jeong Cho2

1Department of Nursing, Gachon University, Incheon, Korea 2Gachon University, Gil Medical Center, Incheon, Korea


Background: This study aimed to investigate the extent to which communication competence, emotional labor and job stress among a group of Korean nurses working in the hospital. Also, the moderating role of nurses' communication competence was evaluated between emotional labor and job stress.
Methods: This study used a cross-sectional descriptive design. Data were collected from 309 nurses working in four general hospitals in Korea from June 30 to July 20, 2021. Data were analyzed using descriptive sta- tistics, Analysis of Variance, t-test, Pearson correlation, and Hierarchical Regression with the SPSS/WIN ver. 28.0 program (IBM.Co., Armonk, NY, USA).
Results: The average score of emotional labor, job stress, and communication ability was 3.39, 3.51, and 3.47 out of 5, respectively. Emotional labor showed a significant correlation between communication competency and job stress, in the relationship between emotional labor and job stress, the moderating effect of communica-tion competency was found to be significant (β=-0.162, P<0.01).
Conclusions: The results showed that it is necessary to make efforts to alleviate communication competency, Emotional labor and job stress plays a buffering role in these relationships. It is suggested that an effective com-munication training program needs to be developed to cultivate communication skills and attitudes that can be applied to nursing practice.Korean J Health Promot 2022;22(3):143-152

Keywords: Nurse, Communication, Competence, Emotions, Job stress