Barriers to building resilience to extreme weather events in Australian hospitals

Australia is facing a future of more regular extreme-weather-events (EWEs) and hospitals will play a critical role in managing the significant health impacts of such events. Informed by insights from socio-ecological resilience theory this paper explores the barriers which exist in making Australian hospitals more resilient to EWEs. Employing a single in-depth case study of a major Australian tertiary hospital which has experienced significant EWEs, data was collected using semi-structured interviews, observations of disaster drills and disaster planning meetings, as well as additional documentary analysis of past incident reports. Findings indicate that hospital disaster planning for built environment challanges is compliance-driven, under-resourced, ad-hoc and non-inclusive. There is also widespread ignorance among key stakeholders of the influence of hospital design in delivering healthcare to the community during an EWE event. It is concluded that disaster management planning needs better resourcing and that procedures, systems and technologies must be put in place to foster better stakeholder communication around hospital facility disaster planning for EWEs.