Using the Stressor-System-Resilience Resources-Outcomes (SSRO) scaffold to clarify the core components of resilience research in medicine

Abstract

Abstract Modern medicine increasingly extends beyond treating disease to supporting individuals through recovery, adaptation, and long-term functioning, all central to the concept of resilience. Despite growing interest, resilience remains conceptually difficult to structure and compare across disciplines, limiting its value for guiding research and clinical care. In this Perspective, we identify recurring features across many resilience traditions and propose a practical organizing scaffold for studying resilience in medicine. The scaffold specifies four elements that any resilience study should make explicit: the stressor, the system, resilience-relevant resources and processes, and outcomes. Using worked examples, we show how the scaffold clarifies resilience questions and improves comparability across studies. We also provide a step-by-step roadmap to help researchers new to the field design resilience studies, from framing a question through to interpreting results.