Moral Resilience Is Distinct From General Resilience When Predicting Burnout Among Interprofessional Health Care...

Burnout, a form of moral suffering, has become more commonplace among health care workers in recent years. Measures of general resilience have been widely used to capture improvement in burnout but lack the ability to capture the anguish that comes with burnout from a moral standpoint. The purpose of this analysis was to understand whether moral resilience is uniquely related to burnout beyond a measure of general resilience in a sample of interprofessional health care workers.

Secondary analysis of cross-sectional survey data.

In total, 702 interprofessional health care workers participated in a cross-sectional survey. Key measures included the Rushton Moral Resilience Scale (RMRS), the Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale (CD-RISC-10), and the Maslach Burnout Inventory-Human Services Survey (MBI-HSS). Hierarchical multiple regression modeling was used to examine the effect of moral resilience (RMRS) in predicting the three dimensions of burnout (MBI-HSS) over and above general resilience (CD-RISC-10).

Moral resilience explained five, six, and 4% of variance for personal accomplishment, depersonalization, and emotional exhaustion, respectively, after accounting for general resilience (CD-RISC-10) and all covariates.

Findings highlight the clear conceptual differences between general and moral resilience and their unique relationship to burnout. Accounting for moral resilience will facilitate an improved multi-level response to moral suffering among health care workers.

Measuring and understanding the differences between general resilience and moral resilience is vital for us to better facilitate the necessary support(s) for health care workers experiencing moral suffering. This will contribute to more sustainable clinical environments, reduced burnout and suffering, and improved patient outcomes.