Nurses are required to manage their emotions, like being empathetic. Emotion management requires emotional self-efficacy and emotion labour, because learning how to it takes effort. If emotional labor is not managed effectively by nurses, burnout will occur among nurses.

To evaluate the emotional labor, emotional self-efficacy and burnout levels of nurses.

Clinic nurses of Hacettepe university hospitals constituted the population of this study. Nursing information form, emotional self-efficacy scale, emotional labour Scale and Maslach Burnout Scale were applied to participating 350 nurses.

It was found out that nurses went through high level “emotional exhaustion”, medium level “depersonalization”, low level “personal accomplishment” and had medium level emotional self-efficacy sense. It was determined that there was a positively relationship between emotional labor and its sub-dimensions surface acting and emotional effort and depersonalization levels, also there was same relationship between surface acting and emotional exhaustion. There was a negative relationship between emotional self-efficacy sense and emotional exhaustion and depersonalization but there was a positive relationship in personal accomplishments. There was a positive relationship between emotional self-efficacy sense between deep acting, emotional effort and suppression of real emotions. Additionally, discrepancies were found in burnout levels of nurses according to sociodemographic, their working and choice of profession characteristics (P < .05).

To prevent and cope with burnout; it has been proposed that awareness training programmes and course contents about emotional management, emotional self-efficacy and emotional labour should be arranged.

The authors have not supplied their declaration of competing interest.