Validation of the Disaster Preparedness Evaluation Tool for Nurses—The Korean Version

Abstract

(1) Background: The purpose of this study was to validate a Korean version of the disaster preparedness evaluation tool (DPET-K) for nurses and to verify its validity and reliability for use in community healthcare centers and hospitals in South Korea; (2) Methods: In total, 497 nurses (248 for exploratory factor analysis and 249 for confirmatory factor analysis) at public health centers, public health sub-centers, public health clinics, and general hospitals in Seoul and Gyeonggi, Chungcheong, and Gangwon Provinces participated in this study. The tool went through translation and back-translation, content validity verification, a pilot survey, and validity and reliability testing; (3) Results: The DPET-K had 28 items with five factors (disaster education and training, disaster knowledge and information, bioterrorism and emergency response, disaster response, and disaster evaluation). The Cronbach’s α values for internal consistency were 0.766–0.953 for the five subscales of the DPET-K. A structural equation model was built through confirmatory factor analysis for goodness of fit (χ2/df = 2.193, SRMR = 0.060, RMSEA = 0.069, GFI = 0.831, CFI = 0.927, NFI = 0.875); (4) Conclusions: The DPET-K was confirmed to be a useful tool for assessing the disaster preparedness of nurses in Korea.

A cross-sectional study on public health nurses' disaster competencies and influencing factors during the COVID-19 pandemic in Korea

“…In this study, the average score of disaster competencies was 84.08 out of 168 points, which can be extrapolated to 50.05 out of 100 points. This figure is slightly lower than 55.95 (out of 100 points) found in a study [ 11 ] conducted among public health nurses and hospital nurses using the same instrument as in this study. The score of the prevention (pre-disaster) stage was the highest, followed by the mitigation (response) and the recovery (post-disaster) stages, which correspond to the findings of a previous study [ 11 ].…”

“…A total of 28 items were scored based on a 6-point Likert scale where higher scores indicated a higher level of disaster competencies. Cronbach’s alpha of DPET-K and in this study were 0.954 [ 11 ] and 0.962, respectively.…”

“…Disaster competencies were measured using the Korean version of the Disaster Preparedness Evaluation Tool for nurses (DPET-K) [ 11 ], which has been adapted from the DPET developed by Bond and Tichy (2007) for evaluating the knowledge and skills related to disaster management among nurses [ 30 ]. This instrument covers nursing competencies required in three disaster management stages: the prevention stage consisting of three domains including disaster education training, disaster knowledge and information, and bioterrorism and emergency response; the mitigation stage including the disaster response domain; and the recovery stage including the disaster evaluation domain.…”

“…Psychological problems of healthcare professionals are associated with their professional competencies, which are also directly related to the quality of nursing care and medical service. Therefore, managing the work environment of public health nurses is critical [ 10 , 11 ]. Public health nurses are an important line of defense for the society, and therefore, their psychological health must be protected and their disaster competencies augmented for an effective response to COVID-19 [ 12 ].…”

Mental health nurses’ disaster nursing competencies: A cross‐sectional study

“…To measure nurses' disaster nursing competencies, instruments such as the Emergency Preparedness Information Questionnaire (EPIQ) (Garbutt et al 2008), the Disaster Preparedness Evaluation Tool (DPET) (Tichy et al 2009), core competencies for disaster medicine and public health (Walsh et al 2012) and public health nursing competencies for public health surge events (Polivka et al 2008) have been developed. The DPET has been adapted and developed into an Arabic (Al Khalaileh et al 2010) and a Korean version (Han & Chun 2021) through psychometric testing. A systematic review of nurses' disaster preparedness also showed that, while numerous studies have used diverse instruments to measure concepts related to disaster nursing competencies (Labrague et al 2018), a clear or adequate framework of analysis has been lacking (Labrague et al 2018;Lee 2014).…”