Exploring influential components and indicators in hospital resilience assessment: a scoping review protocol.

INTRODUCTION

Hospitals are vital infrastructures that provide health services during emergencies and disasters. However, in recent years, disasters have led to hospital losses and interruptions in medical services. Consequently, the concept of resilience has garnered significant attention. Despite extensive research, the lack of clarity in explaining hospital resilience poses challenges in effective assessment and identifying key priorities for enhancing disaster risk management. Recently, the WHO's Eastern Mediterranean Regional Office (EMRO) introduced a conceptual framework for the conceptualisation of hospital resilience, defining it through six interconnected components and four resilience capacities. Identifying specific indicators and characteristics for hospital resilience components based on the EMRO framework. This protocol outlines the method for conducting a scoping review to identify such indicators and characteristics to develop a comprehensive hospital resilience assessment tool.

METHODS AND ANALYSIS

This scoping review will adhere to the six-step protocol proposed by Arksey and O'Malley. It aims to comprehensively understand current knowledge about resilient hospital characteristics and identify effective components and indicators for assessing hospital resilience. The review will encompass available articles indexed in PubMed, Scopus and Web of Science. Additionally, searches will explore the grey literature on Google Scholar, the WHO's website and regional offices. There will be no publication date restrictions applied to the search. Quantitative and qualitative content analyses will assess and categorise the study results. Our protocol was drafted using the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-analysis Protocols extension for scoping reviews.

ETHICS AND DISSEMINATION

This protocol describes a scoping review within a doctoral thesis focused on health in emergencies and disasters, specifically hospital resilience. The study, associated with ethics code number (IR.USWR.REC.1402.120), aims to develop a comprehensive assessment tool for hospital resilience. Once peer-reviewed and published, the findings will inform experts, policymakers and relevant organisations in emergency and disaster management.