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Disaster Emergency Management Training: Preparedness (Knowledge and Attitude) of Health Professionals of Developing Country “Where Do We Stand?”
Abstract
Objective Disasters are the overwhelming events on the communities which are seen increasing around the world. and emergencies have been increasing all over the world. Since medical professionals are the frontliner in the emergencies and disasters, knowledge and training of disaster management of these individuals is a basic need to cope with these conditions. The study aimed to assess the knowledge, attitude and training in emergency and disaster preparedness among health professionals of Pakistan.
Method: Cross-sectional study carried out using self-reported online and paper surveys. In total 750 health professionals responded. The Chi-Square test was used to identify any significant difference in the knowledge and attitude among the professional categories.
Result: The overall knowledge status of health professionals showed of all respondents, 35.06% had good knowledge, 47.06% had fair and 17.86% exhibited poor knowledge. Postgraduate were more knowledgeable than graduates. Doctors were better in knowledge than other subgroups of health specialties. Health administrators seemed insufficiently qualified in emergency and disaster planning. With respect to attitude assessment, majority of study respondents appeared in the ‘positive attitudes’ level to emergency and disaster preparedness. Of all respondents, 45.73% received no courses in disaster preparedness. 60.93% of all respondents had not participated in any exercise indisaster emergency preparedness.
Conclusion: This study shows considerable number of emergency health professionals found deficient in knowledge, with limited opportunities for training despite their beliefs towards disaster emergency management. There was a gross lack of formal teaching and training programs in emergency and disaster medicine. So, for the medical personnel,disaster emergency preparedness training/course should be necessary and efforts should be done to incorporate such courses and training in the curricula of health institutes at undergraduate and post graduate level. Long-term formal training such as undergraduate and postgraduate programs is necessary.
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