Community resilience: what significance does it have for an ambulance service?

The term resilience comes from the latin ‘resili’ meaning ‘to spring back’. It describes an ability to recover readily from adverse events, such as illness; accidents; traumatic incidents; and in more extreme cases, disasters. A resilient community is one that has capacity to anticipate and provide a degree of protection against risks, to limit the impact of, and cope with adverse events, and bounce back rapidly. Community resilience is generally interpreted in relation to health as this broad concept. Bartley's definition (2006) is widely used:

‘The process of withstanding the negative effects of risk exposure, demonstrating positive adjustment in the face of adversity or trauma, and beating the odds associated with risks.’

Research indicates that resilience varies between and within communities. For example, two similarly located/sized settlements may differ in how resilient they are, and their capacity to cope with problems and emergencies. It has been suggested that resilient factors can afford some protection against the disadvantages of socio-economic deprivation, whereby some poor communities have lower rates of mortality than others (Mitchell, 2009).