Adaptation, Transformation and Resilience in Healthcare; Comment on “Government Actions and Their Relation to Resilience in Healthcare During the COVID-19 Pandemic in New South Wales, Australia and Ontario, Canada”

Abstract

Adaptive capacity is a critical component of building resilience in healthcare (RiH). Adaptive capacity comprises the ability of a system to cope with and adapt to disturbances. However, “shocks,” such as the current coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, can potentially exceed critical adaptation thresholds and lead to systemic collapse. To effectively manage healthcare systems during periods of crises, both adaptive and transformative changes are necessary. This commentary discusses adaptation and transformation as two complementary, integral components of resilience and applies them to healthcare. We treat resilience as an emergent property of complex systems that accounts for multiple, often disparately distinct regimes in which multiple processes (eg, adaptation, recovery) are subsumed and operate. We argue that Convergence Mental Health and other transdisciplinary paradigms such as Brain Capital and One Health can facilitate resilience planning and management in healthcare systems.

Keywords

• resilience
• covid-19
• healthcare systems
• health policy
• healthcare management