Theatre practitioners and organisational adaptive capacity in disaster response

Abstract

Disasters are increasing globally, requiring flexible strategic approaches from healthcare organisations to manage the resultant influx of patients requiring care while also maintaining normal operational services. Theatre practitioners play a key role in disaster response and recovery; however, a lack of appropriate skill utilisation may be reducing overall organisational adaptive capacity and leading to poorer outcomes for organisations, staff and patients. Understanding what skills individual practitioners have, and how they can be deployed to the greatest effect, is a concern for managers to ensure optimal use of resources and to reduce negative impacts of disaster response upon healthcare personnel. This is especially pertinent in the post-COVID healthcare climate where a paucity of operating theatre practitioners and poor workforce planning has led to a lack of surgical capacity at a time when it is most needed.

Keywords: Adaptive capacity; Disaster response; Management; Operating theatres; Skill utilisation; Theatre practitioners.