Hospital infrastructure assessments for socio-natural disasters
Citation: Luke J, Franklin R, Aitken P, et al. Safer hospital infrastructure assessments for socio-natural disaster – a scoping review. Prehospital and Disaster Medicine. 2021;36(5):627-35.
Language: Abstract and full text available in English.
Free to view: No.
Funding sources: The authors reported that they had no external funding for this review.
What is this? In this scoping review, the authors searched for studies that discussed hospital resilience against socio-natural disasters. They included checklists and assessments that evaluated structural and non-structural elements. The authors searched in September 2019 for articles published in English between January 2000 and August 2019. They found 22 articles that included 19 countries.
What was found: The authors found seven checklists that classified structural and non-structural components of building resilience were identified, three of which were from the World Health Organization. Key features of structural resilience included the integrity of the building, adherence to building material and design standards, and damage from previous events. Important non-structural resilience included power, water, telecommunication, supply of medical gas, and the replenishment of medical equipment.
Implications: The authors of the review stated the need for standardised methods to evaluate hospital disaster resilience to develop comprehensive, validated guidelines and procedures.
Other considerations: The authors of the review discussed their findings in the context of place of residence and socioeconomic status.
This summary was prepared by Fatima Abbas, checked by Cristián Mansilla and Jawaria Karim, and finalized by William Summerskill.
Evidence Gaps: This review identified two main gaps:
| Evidence gap | Classification | Population/setting identified | Study type |
| “The ability to truly validate checklists, both pre- and post-disaster, is limited due to practicalities. Current research suggests more studies with larger cohorts are required to fully determine which checklists are ideal’’ | More research is needed | Resilient hospitals | N/A |
| “There is, however, limited evidence published in relation to how an assessed hospital has withstood the impact of a socio-natural disaster” | More research is needed | Resilient hospitals | N/A |
An updated search was conducted on 28 November 2023 to check if new studies have filled this gap, finding:
- No more recent systematic review addressing the same or a broader question.
- 1 study of Developing a Hospital Disaster Risk Management Evaluation Model might contribute to partially filling the first gap
This evidence gap was identified, extracted, and classified by Ana Beatriz Pizarro and Jawaria Karim. Updated searches were carried out by Jane McHugh. Ana Beatriz Pizarro assessed the search results to address the gaps, and the findings were checked and finalized by Cristián Mansilla. The methodology we used to assess each gap can be found here.