Hospital Nurses’ Competencies in Disaster Situations

Background and Aim: Natural and man-made disasters have significant effects on the physical, psychological and emotional health of society, meanwhile nurses play an essential role in disaster management. Nurses should have specific competencies in order to provide care for affected people during disaster situations. This study aimed to assess hospital nurses’ competencies in disaster situations.Method: This cross-sectional study was conducted in 2018 to assess the competence of 142 nurses working in teaching hospitals of Kerman city using questionnaire included 50 questions in NCDS (Nurse Competence Disaster Scale) in 4 domains. The results were analyzed using descriptive and analytical statistics with SPSS software version 21.Results: The mean score of nurse’s competence in disasters was at desirable level. In the analysis of multiple regression, among the studied variables, there was only a significant relationship between the nurses’ participation in maneuvers and work experience with score of competence, and the results shown that nurses who had practice during maneuvers had higher competence scores by 19.63 units than those who did not participate (p = 0.0001). Also, nurses with a work experience of more than 11 years had higher competence score by 11.42 units than others (p = 0.0001).Conclusion: Incidents and disasters are permanent and growing threats in all societies, especially Iran. Results of this study demonstrated that, the nurses’ participation in annual maneuvers and exercises programs plays an important role to achieve disaster nurses’ competencies. Therefore, it is recommended that the managers and planners in the field of incidents and disasters should improve nurses’ competencies in disasters through provision of maneuvers, annual training courses and continuous education courses

Keywords:

Nurse , Competency , Emergencies , Disasters