Emergency Department Staff Preparedness for Mass Casualty Events Involving Children

Health-care providers’ perception of knowledge, skills and preparedness for disaster management in primary health-care centres in Jordan

“…This result is inconsistent with findings reported by Rassin et al among HCPs in Israel who found that nurses perceived themselves as having more knowledge and skills than did physicians in managing chemical and biological disasters (26). Our findings may be explained by the more extensive training opportunities for physicians than for nurses and other HCPs in Jordan.…”

“…The study revealed that participants perceived themselves as being moderately prepared, having moderate knowledge and having moderate to weak skills for disaster management. These results are congruent with previous literature indicating that the majority of HCPs, including nurses and physicians in primary and secondary health care facilities, have moderate to weak perception of their preparedness for disaster management (21)(22)(23)(24)(25)(26)(27). HCPs' perceptions of themselves as being only moderately prepared for disaster management could be linked to the lack of awareness of emergency management plans and operational emergency procedures in their workplaces, lack of experience in assisting disaster victims and lack of disaster training programmes in their practice.…”

Emergency nurses’ preparedness for disaster in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

“…Several studies agree that nurses are poorly prepared for disasters by their planning, education, training and responses. [9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25] Nurses must know the relevant disaster emergency plan to be familiar with and recognise their role when an event requires them to respond. [9,10,14,16,24] A clear disaster plan will inform nurses of their chain of command.…”

“…Similarly, Mitchell et al [19] revealed that nurses were willing to receive education and training regarding chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear events. In a study conducted by Rassin et al, [21] respondents rated themselves as having a low level of preparedness for chemical and radiological disaster events. Rassin et al asserted that early preparation affects the ability of nurses to respond effectively to a disaster.…”

“…[5] The literature review of this study revealed that, although nurses seem to be unprepared to respond to disasters, they are willing to undertake training to improve their preparedness. [9,10,16,18,21,22,24,[33][34][35] Thus, the current study examined the disaster preparedness of emergency nurses working in health services in the KSA.…”