Samenvatting

The world has been in the grip of the COVID-19 crisis for a long time. As the course of the crisis was surrounded by uncertainties, the impact on the public health sector and acute and non-acute care organisations fluctuated as well. Crisis experts from the organisation for Medical Assistance at Accidents and Disasters (in Dutch: GHOR) are used to develop short-term scenarios with high levels of uncertainty. In contrast, health experts from Municipal Health Services (in Dutch: GGD’s) are used to develop long-term scenarios with lower levels of uncertainty. To use each other’s expertise, these organisations merged into a combined crisis organisation in the southern region of the South Holland province. Inspired by the theory of sensemaking, a roadmap was developed to describe both short-term and long-term scenarios.
The primary aim of this scenario roadmap is to help healthcare professionals deal with uncertainties during a pandemic’s complex, continuously changing, and long-term situation. It helps to create order in the continuous flow of information and encourages action. The approach consists of six steps. At different time points, time- and context-specific themes are determined (step 1). Subsequently, associated uncertainties are identified for each theme (step 2). In collaboration with healthcare professionals, the GGD GHOR team attempts to make sense of social or political developments relevant to this theme in storylines (step 3). Storylines are jointly translated into action perspectives, such as ‘being prepared for the new wave’ (step 4). Lastly, action perspectives are translated into concrete actions (step 5). If necessary, decisions are made (step 6). The approach does not aim to predict an absolute truth but rather to construct an imaginable future that matches the perceptions of both GGD GHOR and healthcare professionals. The model approach is flexible, allows quantitative as well as qualitative input, and might result in acute actions and long-term plans.