Preparedness assessment for managing disasters among nurses in an international setting: Implications for nurses

The increasing frequency of disastrous incidents emphasizes on the need of an instant and efficient healthcare services. This study assesses the level of preparedness among nurses in Medina regarding the disaster management, with respect to their knowledge.

Cross-sectional study was conducted among five government hospitals in Medina. A total of 330 (94.3%) full-time nurses participated in this study. Emergency Preparedness Information Questionnaire (EPIQ) was used to collect data. Data was then analyzed through descriptive statistics, Levene's test (an independent sample t-test), and One-way ANOVA.

Findings of the study indicated an average level of nurses' preparedness for disaster management (M = 3.37, SD 1.03). The difference found for all the preparedness dimensions with respect to level of nursing education was not significant except for familiarity with ethical issues and triage (p = 0.028), and familiarity with accessing critical resources (p = 0.05). Finally, a statistically significant difference was found in the total mean score of disaster preparedness dimensions between nurses who received training in disaster management and those who did not receive training (p ≤ 0.001).

Based on the mean score from 10 factors the study concluded that majority of the nurses have an average level of preparedness for managing disaster situations. Therefore, providing proper education with respect to EPIQ dimensions to the nurses is thus suggested to increase their level of preparedness.