Resilience and preparedness of hospitals for pandemics: Lessons learned from COVID-19.

Abstract

Amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, health systems around the world took a lot of pressure, and the resilience of these systems has been addressed in thedisaster management and COVID-19 literature. However, little focus has been given to the resilience of hospitals in general. Therefore, the study assessed one hospital in the Free State province of South Africa as a preliminary study for a project that will look at all hospitals in the Free State province. The study assessed the following: (1) the preparedness and actionable strategies that were implemented across the waves of the COVID-19 pandemic; (2) the resilience plans of the hospitals and also determined (3) the resilience of the hospital amid the COVID-19 pandemic; (4) the vulnerabilities exposed by the COVID-19 pandemic in the hospital. Using the R statistical program and modelling, I found that the study hospital was not prepared holistically for the COVID-19 pandemic. The five generalised linear mixed models and the general linear models applied did not show significant differences for the most important variables used to measure resilience. The models showed the hospital to be less resilient to pandemics. Several vulnerabilities were recorded across the hospital.

Contribution: This study's findings suggest that the studied hospital is not resilient to pandemics and will be able to make recommendations to relevant government departments to work together to strengthen the resilience of the country's healthcare system once the project is completed.