How do you feel today? Managing patient emotions during health care experiences to enhance well-being

Health care customers (patients) experience heightened emotions due to high stakes from risks to life, health, and well-being. Understanding and managing emotions during service experiences is an important area of inquiry because emotions influence customer perceptions, future intentions and behaviors. Yet despite its significance, research focusing on the impact of emotions on customer experiences remains fragmented, lacking a theoretically based conceptual framework. The authors attempt to fill this gap by addressing two important research questions contextualized in health care: (1) How can health care organizations better understand patient and family emotions during health care experiences? and (2) How should health care organizations use this understanding to design and better manage patient experiences to enhance patient well-being? The authors propose a new theoretically based framework on emotional responses following triggering events to enhance outcomes. Recommendations designed to enhance health care customer well-being are provided, as are directions to guide future work.