This is the first article from a three-part series that looks at the future of resiliency in Australia and New Zealand’s health systems.
The ongoing coronavirus disease 2019 (covid-19) pandemic, first reported in China in December 2019 and subsequently declared as a pandemic by the World Health Organization (WHO) in March 2020, has caused unprecedented disruptions to health systems and health care delivery across the globe. Since then, countries have scrambled to respond to, mitigate and adapt to constantly evolving challenges that the pandemic has presented across all facets of life. As a primary line of response to the crisis, health systems and healthcare personnel have faced immense pressure and challenges to cope with the mounting demands placed on healthcare delivery, both in absorbing shocks associated with the pandemic and ensuring the continued functionality and provision of routine health services.
‘Resilience’ in healthcare has been a hot topic in recent years, with several frameworks being put forward to assess, measure, and quantify this concept in relation to health systems. Hollnagel et al. define resilience in healthcare as “the ability of the healthcare system (a clinic, a ward, a hospital, a country) to adjust its functioning prior to, during, or following events (changes, disturbances, and opportunities), and thereby sustain required operations under both expected and unexpected conditions.”
This article, the first of three in a series titled “Roadmap to resilience: A post pandemic vision of healthcare delivery”, aims to comment on the resilience of the health systems of Australia and New Zealand in the context of the current pandemic. Using Wood’s concepts of resilience defined as rebound, robustness, and sustained adaptability, the article offers a perspective on how some facets of resilience have been incorporated successfully and other areas that can be improved. The article was written by Amrita Namasivayam and edited by Gerard Dunleavy.
