Basic educational needs of midwifery students for taking the role of an assistance in disaster situations: A cross-sectional study in Iran

After disasters, the disaster medical assistance team composed of skilful healthcare staff should be available at the disaster site for providing care to disaster's victims. It is believed that midwives are at the front line of the disaster management team and should be prepared for providing care to mothers and children.

To investigate the midwifery students' basic educational needs for taking the role of an assistant in disaster situations.

A cross-sectional study was conducted in an urban area of Iran, in year 2015.

Two hundred and thirty-one final-year midwifery students with bachelor and master degrees in midwifery participated in this study.

The samples were chosen using a census method from four nursing and midwifery schools affiliated with four medical sciences universities in Tehran, Iran.

The informed consent form was signed by the samples before data collection. The samples were asked to fill out the researcher's made questionnaires consisting of the demographic data form and the basic educational needs for taking the role of an assistant in disaster situations. The later was consisted of two parts: 'coping with disaster situations' and 'performing the triage'. The data were analysed using descriptive and inferential statistics via the SPSS software for Windows.

The mean score of coping with disaster situations was 31.3±8.2 (out of 45). Also, the mean score of performing the triage was 14.6±11.8 (out of 20). It was found that 68.8 and 74% of the students in coping with disaster situations and performing the triage, respectively had high and very high educational needs. The highest educational need was reported in the areas of 'time management' and 'the use of equipment in disaster situations'. About 86.8% of the students declared that academic education did not prepared them for taking roles in disaster situations. Only 10.6% passed educational courses about disasters before and 11.5% had the work experience in disaster situations. There was a statistically significant relationship between the students' age (P=0.01), participation in educational courses (P=0.005) and the work experience in disaster situations (P=0.04) and educational needs.

Our findings showed that the midwifery students had high needs for education regarding disaster situations. Therefore, the incorporation of disaster management content in the midwifery degree curricula is suggested.