Lessons learned from the resilience of hospitals and staff to the COVID-19 pandemic – HospICOVID

Beyond biomedical research, it is imperative that the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic be studied in terms of its impact on health systems, including health professionals. Indeed, all public health efforts currently being implemented in France and elsewhere are aimed at reducing the burden of COVID-19 on fragile health systems and strained human resources. China's experience has shown us that 14% of COVID-19 cases require hospitalization and 5% require intensive care and mechanical ventilation. Thousands of healthcare professionals have already fallen victim to SARS-CoV-2, nearly 4000 in China and Italy. However, very little research has been undertaken worldwide to understand how SARS-CoV-2 impacts healthcare systems and professionals. It is unclear if the lessons learned from China’s experience have been adequately disseminated and implemented in Western countries. It is urgent to understand how hospitals and their staff have adapted to the current crisis in order to develop operational lessons learned to better manage the current response to COVID-19. Finding effective ways to share the knowledge between countries at different stages of the pandemic and developing a strategy for lessons transfer is paramount to the international containment and management of the COVID-19 pandemic. The aim of this project is to understand and compare the resilience of hospital and staff in China, France and Mali in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. From this work, we will deliver lessons learned based on rigorous science, that will improve the ability to control the pandemic and future threats. We will use a multiple cases study approach with multiple levels of nested analysis. We chose these three countries (China, France and Mali) as they represent three different continents and different stages of the pandemic. We will focus on three major hospitals, Bichat-Claude Bernard (Paris), Hôpital du Mali (Bamako), Hospital of Zhejiang University (China). The research team is composed of international and national experts in epidemic response, health systems analysis and knowledge transfer. It is a multidisciplinary team that will use qualitative data through observations, document analysis and interviews, which is the most relevant and effective method to achieve the project objective. An expert-supported, evidence-based knowledge transfer strategy will enable real-time operational-level lesson sharing and national and international deliberative workshops (with case studies from Canada and Brazil).