Knowledge, attitude and practice regarding Disaster Preparedness among Health Care professionals: a cross sectional study in a tertiary care teaching, research and referral medical institute in South India

K.Vamsi Krishna Reddy; Jonnala Sindhu; N.Lakshmi Bhaskar

Volume : IX, Issue : I, January - 2020

Knowledge, attitude and practice regarding Disaster Preparedness among Health Care professionals: a cross sectional study in a tertiary care teaching, research and referral medical institute in South India

K. Vamsi Krishna Reddy, Jonnala Sindhu, N. Lakshmi Bhaskar

Abstract :

Background Disaster management occupies an important place in this country�s policy framework as it is the poor and the under–privileged who are worst affected on account of calamities /disasters. Hospital disaster management provides the opportunity to plan, prepare and when needed enables a rational response in case of disasters/ mass casualty incidents. Disasters and mass casualties can cause great confusion and inefficiency in the hospitals. Method A descriptive cross–sectional study was conducted amongst 168 health Care Professionals. A self–administered questionnaire was used to assess the knowledge, attitude and practice regarding Disaster preparedness and management. Descriptive analysis was used to analyse the qualitative variables. Comparison of knowledge and attitude among groups of different cadres was done with the help of One sample kolmogorov–smirnov test, kruskal wallis test while chi–square and p Values were also calculated to check the significance in the difference in knowledge or attitude. A p < 0.05 was considered statistically significant. Results Out of 168 Health Care Workers (HCW�s), 38(22.6 %) were Doctors, 46(27.6%) were Nurses, 48(28.6%) were Technicians and 36(21.4%) belonged to Administrative staff. Among individual groups, nursing staff showed the highest level of knowledge followed by doctors, administrative staff and lastly technicians. The difference was found to be significant as chi square test revealed. Chi square=31.519 and p value< .001. Maximum positive attitude is found to be amongst doctors followed by administrative staff, nurses and least positive in the technicians and differences in the attitude was found to be significant (chi square =31.466, p value =<.001). Although almost everyone agreed that drills should be done regularly but 70% of the participants didn�t know whether drills are done at their hospital or not Conclusion This study reflected about the lack of sound knowledge among the Health Care Workers regarding Disaster Preparedness and management. Although the attitude of the staff was found to be positive about the need of disaster plan, it�s timely update, conducting drills and training programmes, it was found that the hospital did not have any training or awareness programs for the staff.