A paradigm shift to enhance patient safety in healthcare, a resilience engineering approach: scoping review of available evidence

Abstract

This review analyses the contributions about resilience engineering as an emerging topic in healthcare literature. Owing to the cross-disciplinarity of the theme, this review takes into account PubMed and Scopus databases through March 2017 as well as other not-indexed papers from the Resilience Engineering Association (REA) symposia and other books in the field. After removing duplicates and screening full-texts, we analysed 63 studies that were categorised into four groups that describe the current research state of resilience engineering in healthcare. This scoping review demonstrates the relevance of resilience in complex healthcare activities, exploring the potential benefits to engineer it. The theoretical background and the preliminary applications confirm the potential of this paradigm shift for safety management to cope with current and future healthcare system needs.