In the Eye of the Storm: Hospital Leaders’ Resilience During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

While health care leaders were already at a high risk for psychological and physiological illnesses long before the pandemic, COVID-19 only exacerbated this situation. Recognizing the crucial role of leaders in organizational crises and building on the conservation of resources theory, our study examines how hospital leaders cope with difficulties that endure over an extended period of time. By using the COVID-19 pandemic as an example for prolonged adversity in hospitals, we provide insight into the different responses to a given adversity and further expand knowledge about the role of time in crisis and for resilience. Qualitative expert interviews were conducted with 44 hospital leaders in Austria between December 2020 and November 2021. For data analysis, we used a hybrid approach, consisting of both deductive and inductive coding. Our empirical study shows that during prolonged adversity, hospital leaders use two types of resilience, namely acceptance and strategic resilience, in which suitability depends on both the duration of exposure and severity of the adversity. Our findings further show that when immediately confronted with adversity, leaders rely on resource-preserving acceptance resilience, while when dealing with the longer-lasting adversity, leaders rely on resilience-enhancing strategic resilience. Even though leaders rely on both types of resilience, our findings also imply that if opportunities to build strategic resilience are limited, higher burnout and turnover rates might be the consequence.