Blocking Time and Running Behind: Making Space for Emotional Labor in Pediatric Medicine

• In Event: 30210 - Shifting Contexts of Clinical Work

Abstract

This paper examines how pediatricians engage in time work (Flaherty 2003) that enables them to perform the emotional labor increasingly expected by parents and central to their own identities as good, caring, attentive, providers within the context of broader shifts in medicine valuing the social-emotional dimensions of healthcare provision and prizing clinical empathy (Vinson and Underman 2020). Drawing on interviews with 11 pediatricians in a small Southeastern city, I outline pediatrician's efforts to create and protect time for emotional labor, manage their own workloads and emotional overwhelm, and consider the implications of this juggling act for the future of pediatric primary care provision.

Author

• Amanda Marie Gengler, Wake Forest University