Emotion management and occupational therapy student learning on placement: A post-structuralist exploration

Introduction: The role of emotion management and emotional labour has been extensively debated and theorised in nursing and medical literature, but until recently, there has been very little written from an occupational therapy perspective Method: This doctoral research explored the emotional aspects of placement learning with a group of seven third-year occupational therapy students, using a post-structural theoretical framework and methodology. A creative arts–based qualitative methodology was employed. The researcher facilitated creative writing groups in which students produced stories and poems about placement experiences. The writing, the group discussions and the one-to-one conversations were analysed with post-structuralist and narrative theory. Findings: The innovative method produced writing that evokes the placement experiences and captures the students’ endeavours to manage their emotions in order to ‘perform the professional’. The findings reveal the role of emotion management in the discourses of professionalism in the health and social-care environment. Conclusion: The research raises questions for the occupational therapy profession about the hidden emotional aspects of our practice and proposes an alternative view of emotion management to that which is implied in the concept of emotional intelligence.