Fostering hospital resilience to disasters : lessons from a tertiary hospital in Nepal

Resilient hospitals are essential to reduce the human impact of disasters. The evidence on the disaster impact on hospitals is limited, and research on hospital resilience is mostly from pre-disaster phases, and does not portray post-disaster realities. This dissertation investigates the impact of a high-magnitude earthquake on a tertiary hospital in Nepal and explores resilience mechanisms, using a combination of quantitative and qualitative methodologies. The key findings are: i) the earthquake produced resource-intensive conditions that required lengthy in-hospital treatment; ii) the hospital’s function was affected and the provision of elective care was disrupted; iii) the hospital’s resilience was highly influenced by emerging adaptations and on resilience of individual staff, which depended of meaningfulness, sense of safety, and sense of belonging. We finish the dissertation with recommendations to improve resilience of health facilities and reduce the human impact of disasters.