01.04.15
The need for healthcare and societal resilience
Source: NHE March/ April 15
Gordon MacDonald, director of Loughborough University’s new MSc in Healthcare and Societal Resilience, looks at the challenge of ‘societal resilience’ and what it means to practitioners today.
‘The arrow one foresees arrives more gently’
– Dante, ‘Paradiso’.
In simple scientific or engineering terms, resilience describes the ability of a substance or object to spring back into shape after suffering extreme stress or change. At the point at which the object is no longer resilient, but experiences further stress, it breaks or suffers catastrophic destruction. However, resilience does not just apply to inanimate objects but also to people. Psychological resilience is an individual’s capability to adapt to stress and adversity, in their emotional, family, financial and work environments. People who are recognised as resilient are generally those who come into management and leadership roles. Unfortunately, one’s personal resilience can be adversely affected by great stress, such as a major emergency or disaster situation in their environment.
Now let’s consider ‘societal resilience’. Modern communities are structured upon multiple interdependencies in order to function properly. Consequently, when an emergency or crisis event combines the recognised resilience stressors of objects and people, those interdependencies can suffer major disruption and cause the breakdown of normal living.
In addressing these disruptive events, communities need to develop appropriate strategies in order to either prevent or mitigate destruction physically, mentally, financially and environmentally. This is done through the application of societal resilience processes, which aim to provide communities with the knowledge, flexibility and capacity to withstand stress and to adapt or change to effectively manage the consequences of the crisis.
Achieving societal resilience necessitates understanding the vulnerabilities of communities and societies. As we know, the beginning of the 21st century has already presented the world with considerable global strategic and disruptive challenges: natural and environmental disasters, climate change, conflict and war, financial crises, terrorism…
In order to fully understand societal vulnerabilities we need to identify, through the application of an integrated risk management process, emerging and dynamic local and global risks and the causal issues that need to be addressed to ensure future resilience. Moreover, societal resilience research, coupled with lessons identified from previous events, could be used to inform policy and provide guidance for practitioners, thus helping communities to anticipate, prepare for, respond to and recover from societal disruption. The immediate provision and sustained maintenance of appropriate healthcare for affected people and their communities during a crisis is crucial in achieving a positive and resilient recovery.
The current NHS Emergency Preparedness Resilience and Response (EPRR) strategy sets out guidance to achieve healthcare resilience, but this is a complex and demanding process, involving a profession that applies science, technology, planning, management and expertise to deal with extremely disruptive events.
There are a number of existing MSc courses that deal with disaster management, risk reduction and, to some extent, resilience. However, there is nothing currently available at MSc level for professional groups, managers and practitioners working within healthcare and associated fields with a health focus.
Many healthcare practitioners are seeking to continue their learning and personal development within the health EPRR arena. A Master’s programme that provides a good breadth of healthcare resilience subjects such as organisational resilience, communicating risk, disaster risk reduction and mass casualty planning, and which is aimed at the health sector is a definite advantage for these groups. It would also be a natural progression from a qualification such as the RSPH Diploma in Health Emergency Planning, to allow these professional groups to pursue further academic study relevant to health protection.
Recognising this need, Loughborough University has designed a Master’s-level course of study, addressing healthcare and societal resilience to meet the needs of those practitioners. Such courses of study are fast becoming recognised as an essential requirement for those practitioners who wish to pursue a career in the field of resilience and emergency management.
The primary aim of the Loughborough course is to provide students with the opportunity to interact with colleagues across the country, as well as academic and key thinkers in the discipline. Moreover, through learning and focused research, students on the programme will gain an enhanced skillset, ultimately strengthening the delivery of the function at all levels within the healthcare environment.
The Healthcare and Societal Resilience MSc, part of the Loughborough suite of Organisational Resilience Masters programmes, launching in 2016, will seek to enable participants and organisations to anticipate, assess and prevent (or at least manage) disruption, including effective recovery measures, whilst remaining agile and able to adapt to disruptive challenges. The intended outcome is the development of resilient communities and organisations ably equipped to not just survive, but thrive in the future.
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