Assessment and development of hospital emergency preparedness plan in response to COVID-19 pandemic in Alexandria University Hospitals

ABSTRACT Background The COVID-19 ongoing pandemic is one of the deadliest pandemics in history. It has put a significant strain on healthcare systems and frontline healthcare workers. This study attempted to assess and develop the emergency preparedness of hospitals affiliated to Alexandria University. Methods A quasi-Aquasi-experimental design was conducted in three phases; the pre-intervention assessment using ahospital emergency response checklist, then awareness intervention was implemented to provide information on emergency preparedness followed by post-intervention assessment after asix-month period following the first phase using the same checklist. Results The pre-intervention assessment showed that four hospitals had a good overall preparedness level (75% or more preparedness level), while the rest of the hospitals (7 hospitals) demonstrated a fair overall preparedness level (50%- <75%). All the individual domains have demonstrated a good or fair to good preparedness levels except the recovery domain, which was fair, and the command and control domain, which was poor in the majority of the studied hospitals. The intervention awareness program has led to a significant statistical change in the command and control as well as human resources domain. However, the post-intervention scores of command and control domain remained poor in the majority of the studied hospitals.