Emergency nurses' requirements for disaster preparedness

Background: Natural and man-made disasters affect people, communities, and health systems. Nurses play a key role in the health system and must be prepared for appropriate response in disasters. Objectives: This study was done to assess the current knowledge of nurses in emergency departments for disaster preparedness. Patients and Methods: This cross-sectional study was conducted on 110 emergency nurses working in teaching hospitals affiliated to Iran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran. A questionnaire was used to collect data and the data were then analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics with SPSS software version 16.0. Results: Based on the findings, most of the participants (64.5) were aged 30 - 39 years old. 84 of the cases were female and 97.3 had a bachelor's degree. The average perceived knowledge of nurses was 2.43 ± 1.01. The nurses had the highest familiarity with triage and lowest knowledge in epidemiology and decision-making. Conclusions: Lack knowledge of nurses regarding response to disaster situations indicates inefficiencies in the current system. Therefore, it is recommended to organize more workshops, annual training courses, and maneuvers based on staff needs and formulate continuous education courses for nurses. Copyright © 2015, Trauma Monthly

Policies on protecting vulnerable people during disasters in Iran: A document analysis

Context: Developing official protection policies for disasters is a main strategy in protecting vulnerable people. The aim of this study was to analyze official documents concerning policies on protecting vulnerable people during disasters. Evidence Acquisition: This study was conducted by the qualitative document analysis method. Documents were gathered by searching websites and referring to the organizations involved in disaster management. The documents were assessed by a researcher-made data collection form. A directed content analysis approach was used to analyze the retrieved documents regarding the protection policies and legislation for vulnerable people. Results: A total of 22 documents were included in the final analysis. Most of the documents referred to women, children, elderly people, poor, and villagers as vulnerable people. Moreover, the documents did not provide information regarding official measures for protecting vulnerable people during different phases of disaster management. Conclusions: A clear and comprehensive definition of "vulnerable people" and formulation of official policies to protect them is needs to be formulated. Given the high prevalence of disasters in Iran, policy makers need to develop effective context-based policies to protect vulnerable people during disasters. Copyright © 2016, Trauma Monthly