Abstract
 Medical doctors are subject to a range of emotions in their daily practices, but their emotional experiences have been neglected in medical literature in Japan. This article introduces the concept of “emotional labor” which has not been accorded proper recognition in the medical field. Then, the importance of focussing attention on “emotional labor” among medical doctors is discussed in relation to both their occupational stress and their patient-doctor relationships.

Introduction
This study aims to clarify how patients and local residents regard physicians and medical care in light of the ongoing nationwide tendency of internists to unexpectedly abandon their posts in local community hospitals.
Methods
The subjects of this study were citizens who chose to continue visiting a community hospital in X City after some of its internists recently left their posts in order to return to their previous hospitals. A questionnaire survey was conducted by focus-group interviews of two patient groups.
Results
Three hundred and ninety-nine responses were judged valid. The causative factors cited by the respondents for the internists’ abandonment of their jobs were: the college or university system (81%), the national institutions (79%), and the nation’ s hospital system (72%). Eighty-eight percent of the respondents observed that internists had done the best they could, while 88% pointed out that internists could not avoid changing their workplaces, 96% wanted internists to exert their utmost efforts for their patients, and 85% found internists trustworthy.
Conclusions
Patients affected by internists' job changes were actually inconvenienced by these, and considered it a matter of course that the results should have meant some loss of freedom for themselves. Moreover, it was suggested that that the physicians had lost their trust in the medical organizations, and the patients were left with very mixed emotions about the physicians. Many patients considered that the practice of medicine is a vocation, and, even though they experienced the physicians' withdrawals from their posts, they still expected a humane attitude in the doctors and communication with them, and they trusted them. However, there were some patients who regarded medicine as a service industry, so that it was suggested that there may be a change in the nature of the trust that patients have in doctors.