Resilience is the ability to adapt and recover from adversity, whether in response to natural disasters, economic crises, or personal challenges. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the need to measure and strengthen resilience in healthcare service provision has become more evident than ever.
To address this need, RESIL-Card’s Work Package 1 (WP1) has developed an innovative framework to assess the resilience of cardiovascular care systems in times of crisis, and more specifically to measure and plan strategies in acute hospital settings.
WP2 takes the lead in 2025 with the pilot testing of the resilience assessment tool (February – November), a crucial step before its official rollout scheduled in 2026.
The pilot process will follow a structured approach and involve various participant groups, including healthcare workers, community leaders and health policy experts.
The primary goal of the pilot test is to evaluate the usefulness of the tool, considering its content, structure, and autonomous use.
A key aspect will be to ensure the tool’s usability meaning it must be intuitive and accessible for professionals from different backgrounds and healthcare settings. Participants’ feedback will also focus on how the tool applies in real-world practice and whether it helps them better understand their own resilience.
How will the pilot test be conducted?
The RESIL-Card tool has been designed to provide personalised and applicable insights for both individuals and organisations. Its main objective is to offer a structured assessment of the resilience of both the hospital and the professionals involved in cardiovascular care.
The pilot process will follow a sequential approach consisting of three key phases:
1. Review of materials and pilot preparation (February – March 2025)
Project partners have reviewed the content of the first version of the resilience assessment tool to ensure materials are clear, accessible, and aligned with the project objectives, resulting in an updated version of the tool.
This version has been shared with the Advisory Board along with a feedback questionnaire to assess the usefulness and applicability of the tool. Based on the results, final adjustments have been made before the pilot implementation.
2. Selection and invitation of the pilot participants (April 2025)
To ensure a representative evaluation, the pilot test will involve participants from diverse professional backgrounds who will be divided into two categories:
- Acute care hospital professionals will actively participate in the pilot by applying the RESIL-Card tool in their hospitals.
- Other healthcare professionals will not participate directly in the pilot but will contribute by completing an evaluation questionnaire on the usefulness and applicability of the tool.
All participants have been involved in the focus groups hosted by WP1 at the end of 2024, and the final list will take into consideration the participants’ availability, their professional profile, and a balanced distribution to obtain representative data from different healthcare settings and professionals across Europe.
3. Pilot implementation and data collection (May – September 2025)
In acute care hospitals, participants will receive the RESIL-Card tool materials, including a step-by-step guide on how to use the assessment tool and the variables they will need from their centre to use it as well as a feedback questionnaire.
Each participating hospital will create a resilience team to complete the evaluation exercise using the RESIL-Card tool. They will explore and analyse their own cardiovascular care pathway, identify the key actors and stakeholders, as well as assess their current status considering the six key resilience dimensions on which the tool is built.
Structured individual interviews will be conducted with participants to review the exercise outcome and to assess the ease of use of the tool, the challenges encountered during the process and the impact of the results on their hospital.
A detailed analysis will be conducted with all collected responses and using the indicators established by the pilot test. The global results will be presented during a group meeting with all participants in September 2025 to generate an open discussion on common identified gaps and difficulties, key conclusions and recommendations.
For non-acute care health professionals – such as primary care physicians, policymakers, community agents, and other key stakeholders – the feedback questionnaire will be distributed to gather insights on the relevance and usefulness of the RESIL-Card tool in broader healthcare settings.
All responses will be compiled and analysed using the same criteria applied to the hospital pilot test.
Why is this pilot test important?
The pilot test allows adjustments to the tool based on healthcare professionals’ needs, with the final goal to make the RESIL-Card tool user-friendly and applicable in real settings.
The tool will be officially launched in 2026 in an open-access mode and made available to any professionals and institutions willing to assess the resilience of their cardiovascular care pathway. Thanks to this pilot test, the RESIL-Card tool should be applicable to a large variety of health centres in Europe.
