Educational content for public health nurses' on-site disaster response: A scoping review, guideline analysis and focus group interview study

To identify and organize educational content for public health nurses' on-site disaster response.

Nurses play critical roles in emergency medical support and community-based disaster response. However, specialized education for public health nurses' on-site disaster response remains limited. Therefore, educational content relevant to their on-site disaster response must be identified and organized.

This was a framework-guided, multi-source study using a scoping review, guideline analysis and focus group interviews.

A scoping review was conducted to identify and map educational content to public health nurses' on-site disaster response. Database searches yielded 2870 records. Following the implementation of inclusion criteria, eight studies were included in the review and eight disaster-response guidelines were analyzed. To identify educational needs for on-site disaster response, focus group interviews were conducted with nine South Korean nurses who had been dispatched to disaster sites as part of the national disaster emergency medical response system.

Key needs related to understanding command systems, clarifying roles and interagency communication, increasing practical confidence, enhancing the usability of disaster manuals and understanding the flow of field emergency medical station operations were identified. Findings were integrated into a conceptual framework constituting the pre-disaster, disaster and post-disaster phases. Educational content included physical and psychological readiness, leadership and clinical competencies, reporting, communication, field emergency medical station operation and evaluation and debriefing.

The conceptual framework can help organize phase-specific education across the disaster cycle. Future research is needed to validate the framework and empirically evaluate educational programs developed from it in improving public health nurses' on-site disaster-response competencies.