Abstract: Objective To investigate the status quo of emotional labor of nurses in emergency department, in order to provide some reference and basis for promoting emergency department nurses to use appropriate emotional labor strategies. Methods With convenient sampling method, a total of 136 nurses in emergency department of two tertiary grade A hospitals in Nanchang were selected in March 2018 and they were investigated with general information questionnaire and Nurse Emotional Labor Scale. Results The average score of emotional labor was 3.69±0.61. The scores of surface acting, deep acting and expression of genuine emotion were 3.52±0.72, 4.36±0.82 and 3.53±0.73 respectively. There was significant difference in surface acting scores among nurses with different ages, marital status and nursing age (P<0.05); there was significant difference in deep acting scores among nurses with different age, nursing age and whether with clinical guidance or not (P<0.05) and there was significant difference in genuine emotion expression scores among nurses with different educational background (P<0.05).Conclusion Emotional labor of nurses in emergency department is in the mediate level. Older nurses, those with longer service length and those married perform best in surface acting; younger nurses, those with shorter service length and those without clinical guidance perform best in deep acting and nurses with undergraduate degree or above perform best in genuine emotion expression. The managers need to pay attention to the appropriate use of emotional labor strategies of emergency nurses in their clinical work and take positive measures to improve their strategies.

Key words: emergency department, nurse, emotional labor, surface acting, deep acting, expression of genuine emotion