Resilience at the front lines: hospital social work with AIDS patients and burnout

Hospital social work practice with AIDS patients has been described as difficult and linked to burnout. The need to help workers cope, reduce burnout and, thus, conserve needed social workers prompted this study of 128 hospital AIDS social workers. Potency, a resilience factor combining mastery, beliefs about self and the world, influenced social workers' perceptions of difficulties and burnout. Potency explained 5% of the variance in difficulty ratings and 10-15% of the variance in three burnout measures. Findings challenge the assumption that burnout is primarily an organizationally-induced phenomenon and affirm the influence of workers' self and world views on burnout. Hospital administrators, social work directors and educators are encouraged to foster workers' sense of mastery and self-esteem to prevent burnout.