Hospital Disaster Preparedness Tools: a Systematic Review.

Area of Science:

• Healthcare Management
• Disaster Medicine
• Health Policy

Background:

• Hospital disaster preparedness is essential for accreditation and effective emergency response.
• Existing evaluation tools often lack robust psychometric properties, impacting their reliability and validity.
• Assessing preparedness is critical for ensuring healthcare facilities can withstand and manage disaster events.

Purpose of the Study:

• To evaluate the quality of outcome measures used in hospital disaster preparedness tools.
• To assess the psychometric properties (measurement level, reliability, validity) of current tools.
• To identify weaknesses in existing hospital disaster preparedness evaluation instruments.

Main Methods:

• A systematic literature search identified 140 studies published between 2000 and 2014.
• PRISMA guidelines were used to appraise studies utilizing hospital disaster preparedness tools.
• The World Health Organization Criteria for Hospital Preparedness and COSMIN criteria assessed content quality and psychometric properties.

Main Results:

• Only 33 studies met the inclusion criteria for the review.
• Eleven distinct hospital disaster preparedness tools were identified across the selected studies.
• The evaluated tools predominantly focused on structural and non-structural preparedness, neglecting key functional aspects.

Conclusions:

• Current hospital disaster preparedness tools exhibit significant weaknesses in psychometric properties.
• There is a critical need for the development of valid and reliable preparedness evaluation tools.
• Future tool development should involve expert knowledge and rigorous psychometric evaluation processes.