The Effect of Disaster Management Training Program on Knowledge, Attitude, and Practice of Hospital Staffs in Natural Disasters

Abstract

Introduction: Hospitals have a very important role in responding to disasters. Since nurses are one of the largest group of the health team and play multi-roles in patient treatment, improvement of their knowledge and skills helps them to act better in disasters.The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of a disaster management training program on the level of knowledge, attitude, and practice of nursing staffs.
 Methods: The present interventional study was conducted in Shahid Rahnemoon Hospital, Yazd, Iran in 2018. At first, 40 nurses were randomly selected and their level of knowledge, attitude, and practice was measured using the questionnaire of nurses’ preparedness in disasters. The questionnaire consisted of 72 items; The total attainable score was 132 in the questionnaire. Then, the disaster preparedness training program was implemented. The program was conducted in the form of a one-day workshop for eight hours. One month after the education program, the nurses' level of readiness, including their knowledge, attitude, and practice was re-evaluated using the same questionnaire. Data analysis was conducted by paired samples t-test using SPSS 22.
 Results: The results of the study showed that the mean score of nurses' knowledge increased from 14.23 to 21.30, the mean scores of their attitude increased from 62.20 to 71.67, and their performance mean score increased from 7.28 to 11.88. These differences were statistically significant (p <0.001). Furthermore, the total mean score of nurses’ readiness increased from 82.28 to 104.53, which was statistically significant (p <0.001).
 Conclusion: According to the results of the study, the educational program increased the nurses' preparedness containing their knowledge, attitude, and practice in responding to disasters. Consequently, continuous education courses on crisis and disaster management are necessary. The nurses are also recommended to participate in these courses to increase their readiness.

Comparison of the Effect of Lecturing and Tabletop Exercise Methods on Level of Preparedness of Nurses against Natural Disasters

“…Applying various other teaching methods combined with lecturing can promote the level of nurses' preparedness; therefore, we can use such combined methods to improve the efficacy of education. Lecturing is a common procedure used to increase knowledge; other studies have also confirmed its efficacy, approving our findings [9,11]. Using handbooks for nurses has successfully enabled them to achieve considerable awareness in coping with disasters and modifying their attitudes [10].…”

“…Therefore, the increased preparedness of healthcare systems for identifying risks and responding appropriately to disasters is of utmost importance [8]. Preparedness of hospitals against natural disasters influences their performance in the best care provision and increases their capacity for suitable responding in these conditions [9]. The global reports stated that the approval of plans and policies, designing and building resilient hospitals at the national level, assessment of hospital safety, education, protection of personnel and equipment, and strategic planning for emergency responding are among the facilities and approaches for safe care provision [8].…”

“…Considering the outstanding role of hospitals in caregiving due to frequent patient presentations, their preparedness for appropriate disaster-responding is mandatory [10]. Thus, the level of knowledge, attitude, and performance of the healthcare personnel, especially nurses, as a considerable group of professional caregivers, must be enhanced [9]. The World Health Organization (WHO) has rendered the personnel's preparedness and education as an appropriate strategy in diminishing traumata and damage [11].…”

The effect of the disaster management training program among nursing students

“…Some studies reported that nurses' awareness of their role and skills in disasters was not adequate, they were not well prepared for future disasters (Basnet, Songwathana, & Sae-Sia, 2016;Yan, Turale, Stone, & Petrini, 2015), this was because they did not have enough training for disaster preparedness, but that the training programs carried out on this area positively affected nurses' preparedness to respond to disasters (Ghanbari, Maddah, Khankeh, & Karimloo, 2011;Mirzaei, Adel, Sadeghian, Kazemi, & Nadjarzadeh, 2019). In another study, the training was shown to make nurses more prepared to respond to disasters (Goodhue et al, 2012).…”

Game‐based learning: A review of tabletop exercises for cybersecurity incident response training

“…31 Although gray literature is not formally published in the same way as traditional academic literature, such as books, journal, and conference articles, it includes academic theses, organization reports, government papers among others which may prove to be highly influential in research and systematic reviews. 32 In the context of this study, gray literature plays an important role as it enables the researchers to gather useful data for a study. The analysis, including selection and inclusion procedures, are discussed in Section 3.2.1 (Figure 2).…”