This study is a descriptive survey to identify emotional labor and job stress recognized in the course of administrative work, and how these affect the professional quality of life of public health nurses according to the employment type.

Data was collected through a survey of public health nurses conducted from Dec. 2018 to Jan. 2019 (N=232).

The emotional labor of public health nurses was 3.27 out of 5 and full-time public health nurses had the highest scores. The job stress score was moderate at 2.45 out of four. The job stress of full-time nurses was also the highest. Among the sub-divisions of professional quality of life, compassion satisfaction was 3.55 out of five, while secondary traumatic stress was moderate at 2.48 and exhaustion at 3.01. Factors affecting compassion satisfaction were shown to be employment types and exhaustion. Factors affecting secondary traumatic stress were exhaustion, job stress and emotional labor. Factors affecting exhaustion were secondary traumatic stress and compassion satisfaction.

The results of this study shows that full-time public health nurses in charge of nursing organizations at public health centers have extreme difficulty with excessive role responsibilities, resulting in high emotional labor intensity and high job stress.