Drawing emotions, building resilience: exploring healthcare professionals’ emotional labour through body mapping

Emotional labour and resilience are key elements of healthcare work. However, prior research has highlighted that emotional regulation can result in burnout, stress and high turnover, phenomena that have been exacerbated by neoliberal economic policies. This article presents an art-based, creative method to explore healthcare professionals’ emotional labour and resilience strategies in practice. Specifically, we have designed a qualitative research procedure that combines prompts, structured interviews and body-mapping techniques to help healthcare professionals reflect on their lived emotional experiences and emerging needs in the workplace. Through a series of public research workshops, 20 participants within the Italian sociocultural context were involved. Results show that the production of visual, discursive and performative self-narratives enabled participants to: (1) slow down stress; (2) stimulate empathetic dialogue among themselves; and (3) improve both internal and external emotional awareness, thus highlighting the need for structural support and a deeper understanding of healthcare workers’ emotional challenges.