Objective  To explore relevant concepts of hospital resilience governance (HRG) in the context of major public health emergencies and to provide theoretical support for improving hospitals’ ability to respond to major public health emergencies.

  Methods  Via searching China National Knowledge Infrastructure, we retrieved 136 HRG-related literatures published from August 10, 2014 to April 25, 2021 and sorted out HRG-related semantics based on 1 662 paragraphs extracted from the literatures. ROST CM 6.0 software was used to perform semantic network analysis on the high-frequency keywords relevant to HRG.

  Results  Through semantic network analysis on 35 key elements of HRG abstracted from high-frequency key words in the 1 662 paragraphs, the concept of HRG in the context of major public health emergencies is defined as a management process to enhance a hospital′s overall resilience against the disturbance and impact caused by major public health emergencies through multi-departmental comprehensive management and multi-subjects cooperation; the implementation of the management process could support a hospital to maintain the stability of main functions due to promoted resistance, absorption, recovery, adaptation and learning when coping with a major public health emergency.

  Conclusion  The successful HRG in the context of major public health emergencies could be manifested directly by hospitals′ safe and orderly operation in high risk circumstances during whole process of major emergencies through continuous participation and cooperation of multiple subjects and departments.