Nidhi Yadav, K. Preetham, P. Anchalia
ABSTRACT
The study is designed and conducted to understand the baseline of knowledge, attitude and practice towards disaster management among health care providers. Sampling is done among nurses, housekeeping and security staff to obtain statistically significant findings, based on which targeted intervention can be planned. The key findings suggest that level of education and year of experience at hospital had an effect on knowledge about disaster management. Major problem area found were knowledge about who is incident commander during disaster, during which phase of disaster management hospitals play most important and where hospital’s disaster management plan can be found. Nurses had positive attitude towards disaster management they agreed to that hospital should have disaster management plan, they should know about disaster plan, effects of disaster can be reduced, mock drills should be conducted regularly and for all classes of staff, they know their responsibility during disaster but majority agreed to that hospital is unlikely to be affected by disaster. 93.89% of correct responses was obtained in practice section in case of nurses. Level of education and year of experience at hospital they are currently working had an effect on knowledge about current practices of disaster management at their hospital. Regular and frequent training should be conducted regarding basic knowledge about what disaster situation is, disaster management, phases of disaster management, disaster preparedness, hospital’s role in different phases of disaster management cycle.