Emergency Preparedness Information among Emergency Nurses and Its Relationship with Disaster Preparedness

Abstract

Nurses are health workers who play an essential role in disaster management, so the right strategy is needed in disaster preparedness. Management of disaster is an intervention in the Emergency Department (ED) that has an essential role in preparedness, emergency responses, and recovery to reduce the effects during and after the disaster. Emergency preparedness information in the ED has a scope like triage and first aid, biological agent detection, accessing critical resources and reporting, the incident command system (ICS), isolation, quarantine and decontamination, psychological issues, epidemiology and clinical decision making, communication and connectivity. This study aims to determine the emergency preparedness information and disaster preparedness. This study used a cross-sectional study design, conducted in three emergency department of a disaster referral hospital in Padang City. Respondents participated in this study were selected using a purposive sampling technique with inclusion criteria, as many as 61  respondents were selected. A few instruments were used in this study. Emergency Preparedness Information Questionnaire (EPIQ), which aims to measure the preparedness of emergency nurses in dealing with disasters, and the Disaster Preparedness Evaluation Tools (DPET) ® determine the preparedness of nurses in dealing with disasters. The variables in this study were tested using the Pearson statistical test, which tested the relationship between emergency room nurses' preparedness to deal with disasters and disaster preparedness. The results shows the relationship between the emergency preparedness information and the disaster preparedness among nurses with a p-value of 0.003, with low correlation r-value of 0.373. The emergency department is a health service that provides emergency response when disaster occurs. So that the emergency preparedness information must be improved in dealing with disaster situations becomes optimal.