Resilience factors contributing to healthcare professionals’ adaptive capacity with hospital standardization: a scoping review

Abstract

Background Certain factors contribute to healthcare professionals’ capacities to adapt to risks, challenges, and changes and perform in resilient ways such as attitudes, stress, motivation, cognitive capacity, group norms, and teamwork. However, there is limited evidence as to factors that contribute to healthcare professionals’ adaptive capacity towards hospital standardization. This scoping review aimed to identify and map the resilience factors contributing to healthcare professionals’ adaptive capacity with hospital standardization. Methods Arksey & O’Malley’s (2005) and Levac et al’s (2010) methodologies guided the scoping review. We searched six academic databases to September 2021 for peer-reviewed articles in English. We also reviewed grey literature sources and the reference lists of included studies. Quantitative and qualitative studies were included if they focused on factors influencing how healthcare professionals adapted towards hospital standardization such as guidelines, procedures, and strategies linked to clinical practice. Two researchers conducted a three-stage screening process and extracted data on study characteristics, hospital standardization practices and resilience factors. Study quality was not assessed. Results A total of 57 studies were included in the review. Resilience factors contributing to healthcare professionals’ adaptive capacity were identified in numerous standardization practices ranging from hand hygiene and personal protective equipment to clinical guidelines or protocols on for example asthma, pneumonia, antimicrobial prophylaxis, or cancer. The resilience factors were grouped in eight categories: (1) psychological and emotional, (2) cognitive, (3) motivational, (4) knowledge and experience, (5) professional role, (6) risk management, (7) patient and family, and (8) work relationships. This combination of individual and group/social factors decided whether healthcare professionals complied with or adapted their practices to hospital standardization efforts. Contextual factors were identified related to guideline system, cultural norms, leadership support, physical environment, time, and workload. Conclusion The literature on how healthcare professionals adapt to hospital standardization is varied and reflect different reasons for compliance or non-compliance to rules, guidelines, and protocols. However, more in-depth knowledge is needed to fully understand the situations in which healthcare professionals’ adaptive capacity is a prerequisite for quality of care following hospital standardization. Protocol registration: On Open Science Framework (https://osf.io/ev7az) https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/EV7AZ