The urgent necessity to enhance hospital resilience has been underscored by the prevalence of major emergent contagious diseases (MEIDs). These conditions often unleash a ‘medical run’, representing a significant crisis for healthcare systems to tackle. Developing resilience within hospitals is pivotal to augment capacity handling during times of major healthcare emergencies. A research was initiated with an aim to build a system of elements specifically focusing on hospital resilience during medical runs in major emerging infectious diseases.
Employing the 4R conceptual model, along with extensive literary content analysis, an initial draft was devised for creating a system of hospital resilience. This draft was further fine-tuned in a two-round Delphi survey involving 18 experts from diverse fields across China. This comprehensive process was guided by the Standard for Conducting and Reporting Delphi Studies (CREDES), detailing weights of each element as determined using the Analytic Hierarchy Process. The authority coefficient for both rounds was 0.9159, indicating strong concordance and agreement amongst expert opinions.
The finalized element system encapsulated four prime matter elements (Resourcefulness, Redundancy, Robustness, Recovery), 21 secondary elements, and 65 tertiary elements weighing 0.2908, 0.2056, 0.4348, and 0.0688 respectively. By elucidating components of hospital resilience in the backdrop of major infectious disease outbreaks, this research aids in mitigating the heavy impact of medical runs. The study offers a practical checklist and a crucial assessment program for improving resilience that may substantially influence hospital training and management strategies.
Deeper scrutiny of the study emphasizes the critical role of hospitals during major infectious disease outbreaks, shouldering duties far beyond medical aid provision, such as psychological support, and tackling multifaceted challenges. Hospitals inevitably face diverse problems like lack of protection awareness, resource shortage, and human resource strains, escalating the risk of infection. Additional issues comprise low risk awareness and response in the early stages of major infectious disease outbreak, improving only upon gradual disease recognition.
Global impact of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic demonstrates serious implications of such breakouts, characterized by medical runs, or extreme hospital overload events incited by drastic surge in medical demand. These overload events strain health resources leading to hospital system collapse and serious socio-economic consequences. Suggestions indicate that MEIDs are likely to lead to similar medical runs in future, continuously affecting hospital functions and patient care.
Previously, the concept of resilience was primarily an area specific to engineering disciplines before being gradually incorporated into disaster management researches. Building resilience has a future outlook, introducing innovative catastrophic shock response modes that are active, positive, and reflective, assuring continuous system improvement. Constructing resilience stands as a proactive measure, assisting hospitals in combating future outbreaks of MEIDs.
This study’s primary findings aimed at devising an element system for hospital resilience provide actionable and quantifiable recommendations particularly pertinent in handling major emergent contagious diseases in hospital systems. This includes expert panel recommendations and prioritized responses for improved hospital resilience. The findings serve as vital tools enabling healthcare professionals better manage and avoid medical run scenarios.
Source: https://bmcinfectdis.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12879-025-10993-5