Resilience is an emerging concept in health system performance, which has gained significant attention after the 2008 global economic crisis and the Zica and Ebola outbreaks. However, the COVID-19 pandemic has tremendously enhanced the research interest toward the topic, considering resilience as an essential aspect of health system governance and strengthening. The aim of the study is to review the concept of health system resilience and to synthesise the current state of ideas. The study traces the development of the concept in health care and the influence of other scientific fields. Different interpretations of resilience in the context of the health system as a complex adaptive system are scrutinised in order to summarise the underlying characteristics and capacities of the resilient health care. As undesirable as the shocks, crises, disruptive events, perturbations and stresses are, they stimulate efforts to comprehend the system better, to get to know the kinds of disturbances it can endure, its possible tolerance and performance boundaries, capacity to react and adapt and, eventually, to transform.
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