Patterns of Emotional functioning and Well being in Health care workers

:Health care workers (HCW) represent a specially-at-risk population as regards their psychological well-being given theirtypical job characteristics -that include several and frequent stressors, and a constant contact with illness. The present study -partially founded by CARIPARO - address issues of psychophysical well-being (WB) in relation to various self-evaluated aspects -during several brief online measurement sessions- of emotion-related functioning (ERF) and work features. Participants were 240young and older HCW (men 20%). The sample's scores were later compared to a larger sample (LS) of about 2000 people working invarious other sectors (e.g., scientific and technical professios, commerce). The results obtained from the analysis of participants'answers to several self-report scales showed that HCW generally displayed a positive pattern of features and did not differ from LS asregards most ERF aspects (e.g., felt affect, emotion awareness, regulation, coping), except for their lower scores on TAS-externaloriented thought. HCW showed also greater job satisfaction than LS. Both age and gender differences were observed within HCW.Men reported more negative affect, emotional labor, use of emotion-expression suppression, and alexithimia than women, whereaswomen used cognitive reappraisal, coped by seeking social support, and expressed their emotions more than men did. Overall theyounger age group (25 yrs or less) showed a more-at-risk profile than the older one - e.g., lesser emotion awareness and coping bysocial support, greater coping by avoidance and suppression, greater alexithimia, as well as lesser job involvement and lower health.Altogether the study shows that several aspects of emotion-related functioning and of the psychological orientation to work-aspectscontribute to define HCW psychophysical well-being, and, as a consequence, their functioning within the organization