Exploring the influence of health system factors on adaptive capacity in diverse hospital teams in Norway: a multiple case study approach

Objectives: Understanding flexibility and adaptive capacities in complex healthcare systems is a cornerstone of resilient healthcare. Health systems provide structures in the form of standards, rules and regulation to healthcare providers in defined settings such as hospitals. There is little knowledge of how hospital teams are affected by the rules and regulations imposed by multiple governmental bodies, and how health system factors influence adaptive capacity in hospital teams. The aim of this study is to explore the extent to which health system factors enable or constrain adaptive capacity in hospital teams.

Design: A qualitative multiple case study using observation and semistructured interviews was conducted between November 2020 and June 2021. Data were analysed through qualitative content analysis with a combined inductive and deductive approach.

Setting: Two hospitals situated in the same health region in Norway.

Participants: Members from 8 different hospital teams were observed during their workday (115 hours) and were subsequently interviewed about their work (n=30). The teams were categorised as structural, hybrid, coordinating and responsive teams.

Results: Two main health system factors were found to enable adaptive capacity in the teams: (1) organisation according to regulatory requirements to ensure adaptive capacity, and (2) negotiation of various resources provided by the governing authorities to ensure adaptive capacity. Our results show that aligning to local context of these health system factors affected the team's adaptive capacity.

Conclusions: Health system factors should create conditions for careful and safe care to emerge and provide conditions that allow for teams to develop both their professional expertise and systems and guidelines that are robust yet sufficiently flexible to fit their everyday work context.