Purpose: This study aims to generate an integrated understanding of nurses’ emotional labor by synthesizing qualitative evidence and proposing implications for practice and organizational support. Methods: A qualitative metasynthesis was conducted using a meta-ethnographic approach informed by Noblit and Hare’s interpretive synthesis method. Six qualitative studies exploring nurses’ experiences of emotional labor in South Korea were synthesized across diverse practice contexts, including inpatient wards, outpatient clinics, emergency departments, and community-based visiting nursing. Findings from each study were repeatedly read, compared, and translated into one another to identify shared meanings and higher-order interpretations, resulting in synthesized themes and an overarching line of argument. Results: Four themes were identified: First, nurses calibrated emotional expressions between standardized expectations of kindness and professional identity and routinely managed emotional displays to sustain care, education, coordination, and mediation roles. Second, emotional labor extended beyond emotion management to situational control under asymmetric power dynamics and safety threats, including verbal abuse, intimidation, sexual harassment, and context-specific risks such as solitary home visits. Third, isolation and work intensification accelerated burnout, as chronic understaffing, time pressure, ambiguous role boundaries, and insufficient managerial mediation accumulated unresolved emotional strain, contributing to withdrawal and turnover intentions. Fourth, nurses reconstructed professionalism through meaning-making and recovery resources, drawing on patient appreciation, professional pride, peer support, cognitive reappraisal, and experiential learning; however, personal coping had limited capacity to offset structural hazards. Across themes, the core experience involved enduring and regulating emotions to preserve professionalism amid unstable, conflict-prone interactions. Conclusion: Nurses’ emotional labor is a relational and structural phenomenon shaped by service norms, organizational metrics, workplace safety conditions, staffing and workload realities, and hierarchical culture. Interventions should move beyond individual-level training to multilevel strategies, including clarifying role boundaries and response standards, institutionalizing violence prevention and rapid support systems, redesigning staffing and workflow, strengthening supportive leadership and peer debriefing, and embedding accessible recovery resources within organizations.

서 론
    1. 연구의 필요성
    2. 연구목적
연 구 방 법
    1. 연구설계
    2. 문헌검색 및 자료추출
    3. 자료의 질 평가
    4. 질적 메타합성 단계
    5. 윤리적 고려
연 구 결 과
    1. 규범화된 친절과 전문직 역할 사이에서 감정을 조율함
    2. 비대칭 권력과 안전위협 속에서 현장을 통제함
    3. 고립과 과중한 업무가 소진을 가속화함
    4. 의미화와 회복자원으로 전문성을 재구성함
논 의
결 론 및 제 언
REFERENCES

• 김승주(한림성심대학교 간호학부,간호학연구소 부교수) | Kim Seung Ju (Associate Professor, College of Nursing ․ Research Institute of Nursing Science, Hallym Polytechnic University, Chuncheon, Korea)
• 최형준(국립경찰병원 간호사) | Choi Hyung Jun (Nurse, National Police Hospital, Seoul, Korea)
• 이광숙(동방문화대학원대학교 미래교육원 책임교수) | Lee Kwang Suk (Principal Pofessor, Institute for Future Education, Dongbang Graduate University, Seoul, Korea)
• 허연정(한림성심대학교 간호학부,간호학연구소 조교수) | Heo Yeon Jeong (Assistant Professor, College of Nursing ․ Research Institute of Nursing Science, Hallym Polytechnic University, Chuncheon, Korea) Corresponding author