Nurses’ Knowledge, Attitudes, Practices and Familiarity Regarding Disaster Management and Emergency Preparedness in Bangladesh

Abstract

Disaster is an unpredictable and can hit at any time and place; increasingly happening disasters around the globe are one of the major threats to human health and life. It would be prevented by prepared health personnel including nurses. Purpose: The study aimed to assess the nurses’ knowledge, attitudes, practices and familiarity regarding disaster management and emergency preparedness in Bangladesh. Methods: A descriptive cross sectional study was conducted at the two coastal districts Hospital in Bangladesh among 134 nurses who were recruited conveniently. Content validity done by three experts. The reliability of the instrument was 0.71. The study maintains the ethical consideration and protects human rights. Data was collected by self-administered questionnaire and analyzed by using descriptive statistics (mean, standard deviation, frequency) and inferential statistics (Pearson Chi Squire and two sample t-test). Results: Study result revealed that the mean age of the study participants were 37.49 year and majority of them was female (90.3%), married (93.3%) and Muslim (78.4%). Study also shows that the participants had adequate knowledge (M = 1.9, SD = .135), good attitude (M = 1.90, SD = .135), medium level of practice (M = 1.12, SD = 0.159) and average level of familiarity (M = 2.07, SD = .362) regarding Disaster and its preparedness. Only 47% participants had good practice regarding disaster management. There were found a statistically significant relationship between disaster management practice with age (t = - .411, p = .000). Marital status (x2 = 8.56, p = .003), Service Experience (t = -3.65, p = 000) and work place (x2 = 19.736, p =.001)) and with familiarity (t = -4.74, p = .000). Conclusion: The present study concluded that though nurse’s had adequate knowledge, positive attitude and average familiarity towards disaster management and preparedness, but they possess medium level of practice regarding disaster management. Thus, investigators recommend that the national health policy should be given sufficient focused on disaster preparedness as well as a specialty in disaster nursing should be introduced in nursing curricula.