A Comparative Survey on Burnout and Resilience in Frontline workers afflicted by COVID 19 versus Non-afflicted, in the Second wave, in Andhra Pradesh, India.: Abstract for free paper presentation

BACKGROUND: The Covid-19 pandemic is of an international scale with the number of people working on frontlines in healthcare positions has been of a scale never witnessed before. The wellbeing and emotional resilience of healthcare professionals are key components of continued delivery of healthcare services during the pandemic. Although, researchers have estimated burnout and resilience among health care workers, they didn’t study in health care workers who were infected with covid. Nor was the group compared to uninfected health care workers. AIMS: To compare these two groups to gain insights into how the infection will affect the already wounded morale of the health care workers in the light of continued onslaught in form of subsequent waves. METHODS: : This cross sectional study was conducted for 1 month, after obtaining the ethics clearance. Purposive sampling was used to include doctors, interns & nurses involved in Covid 19 duties in Andhra Pradesh during the second wave. A specially prepared anonymous, voluntary, online, valid, reliable self-administered google form was used. Brief resilience scale and Copenhagen Burnout inventory, used to asses resilience and burnout respectively, along with socio demographic data. The data was analysed using by Chi - square test, Fischer - exact test for significance of association. RESULTS: The sample consisted of 249 respondents, of which, majority (n=134; 45.4%) were between the ages 18-24 yrs, and most of them, interns (n=146; 58.6%). As per the two groups, 27.7%(n=69) of subjects have been afflicted by Covid 19 during second wave. CONCLUSION: The mean resilience for those afflicted by COVID 19 and Non-afflicted was 2.9 and 3.2 respectively and mean work-related burnout was 60.7 and 54.6 respectively, indicating a difference in attitudes and outlook towards the work.