FIReS webinar 1: Fostering innovative resilience of clinical services to major disasters

The COVID-19 pandemic stretched for the first time ever modern healthcare systems globally. Hospitals were forced to cancel elective operations, develop new work approaches and redeploy staff to treat infected patients, limit infection rates while maintaining most urgent operations. Although this approach is often adopted during disasters, its adoption for pandemic has caused tremendous disruption for healthcare systems in the forms of backlog and reduction in the ability of hospitals to provide care to millions of patients as reported by the British Medical Association (BMA) and questioned the resilience of healthcare service to major disasters. Healthcare staff stress has increased dramatically and many decided to leave their professions or took long sick leave adding more pressure. Healthcare services are now in challenging but also potentially ground-breaking position to re-think the way they operate. This webinar brings together international healthcare professionals and researchers to discuss, debate and provide facts to explain the reasons for which clinical service are vulnerable and identify areas to enhance resilience.

This unique webinar is one of series of free events sponsored by the Royal Academy of Engineering to rethink healthcare resilience from a global perspective. The webinar is designed to represent the complexity of healthcare and will provide information for professionals, major emergency planners and policy makers.

Eight (8) speakers from different medical backgrounds present their international experience, knowledge and opinion about different aspects of healthcare resilience. They discussed and answered questions of the general public who joined the webinar in the 2 Q&A sessions and Panel Discussion.

The webinar was held on 15 February 2022 and it involved experts and speakers from 5 countries, Italy, Sweden, Turkey, UK and USA.