Disaster Preparedness Among Nurses working in A Paediatric Acute Care Setting of A Tertiary Hospital, South India

Disasters pose unique challenge for every medical care facility in terms of infrastructure, capacity, and preparedness. World Health Organization stresses that healthcare workers need to be prepared for a disaster. As nurses are the largest manpower group in the health care team they need to be trained to equip with the competencies required during disasters to rescue life and safeguard the health of the children. International Council for Nurses (ICN) alerts all nurses to be prepared with adequate knowledge in order to respond to disaster events effectively. The purpose of the study was to assess the perception and knowledge among nurses on disaster preparedness. A descriptive study design and convenience sampling technique was adopted. The tool was prepared by the investigator under the guidance of experts which consisted of three parts, the demographic variables of the participants, scale on perception of nurses on disaster preparedness and a knowledge questionnaire on disaster preparedness. Descriptive and inferential statistics such as frequency, mean, chisquare, and Pearson’s correlation were used for data analysis. The demographic profile of the staff revealed that majority (58.5%) belonged to 26 to 35 yrs, were Diploma nurses (82%), and 51.1% had experience of 1-5 years in critical care settings. The study revealed that 24.5% had adequate knowledge, 51.1% moderately adequate knowledge, and 24.5% inadequate knowledge. Most (85.1%) of the nurses had moderate perception on disaster preparedness. There was no statistically significant correlation (r = .186, p = .072) between the perception and the knowledge of the participants. There was an association between the qualification of the nurses and the perception (X 2 = 32.182, p = .000).