Recovery from Acute Illness is dependent on severity of illness. We aimed to investigate whether resilience as the ‘ability to bounce back’ might also affect recovery.

We conducted a scoping review to identify gaps in the existing literature. We used emergency care, intensive care, critical care and trauma as surrogates for acute illness. We mapped synonyms for resilience and selected ‘resilience’ and ‘robustness’. The search was limited to adult patients admitted to hospitals.

We found strong evidence for psychological sequelae of acute illness but no research focusing specifically on the concepts of resilience or robustness and no interventional studies in the acute hospital setting.

The concept of resilience might be applicable to unscheduled admissions to hospital. Measurements and potential interventions require further research.

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