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Hospitals Disaster Preparedness and Management in the Eastern Province of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia: A Cross-sectional study

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 April 2021

Abdullah Alruwaili ,
Md Shahidul Islam  and
Kim Usher
Abdullah Alruwaili*
Affiliation:
University of New England School of Health, Armidale, NSW, Australia College of Applied Medical Sciences, King Saud bin Abdulaziz University for Health Sciences, Al-Ahsa, Saudi Arabia
Md Shahidul Islam
Affiliation:
University of New England School of Health, Armidale, NSW, Australia
Kim Usher
Affiliation:
University of New England School of Health, Armidale, NSW, Australia
*
Corresponding author: Abdullah Alruwaili, Email: Ruwailia1@yahoo.com.
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Abstract

Objective:

The current study was conducted to assess disaster preparedness of hospitals in the Eastern region of Saudi Arabia.

Methods:

A descriptive cross-sectional study of all hospitals in the Eastern Region of KSA was conducted between July 2017 and July 2018. The included hospitals were selected using convenience sampling. The questionnaire was distributed together with an official letter providing information about the aim and objectives of the study as well as ethical issues guiding their participation in the exercise.

Results:

All the included hospitals had a disaster plan that was completely accessible by all staff members. About 70% of the included hospitals established an educational program on disaster preparedness once per year. Assessment of hospital disaster preparedness was conducted using disaster drills in 62 (n= 98%) of the hospitals. However, only 9.5% of the hospitals had post-disaster recovery assistance programs like counseling and support services.

Conclusion:

Most hospitals involved in this study had sufficient resources for disaster management; however, the overall effectiveness of hospitals’ disaster preparedness was slight to moderate. Some recommendations to improve hospitals’ disaster preparedness should be proposed, including improved staff training and testing, better communications and safety procedures, and adoption of a holistic approach for disaster management.

Keywords

disaster preparednesshospitalsEastern provinceemergency managementSaudi Arabia
Type
Original Research
Information
Disaster Medicine and Public Health Preparedness , Volume 16 , Issue 3 , June 2022 , pp. 1038 - 1045
Copyright
© Society for Disaster Medicine and Public Health, Inc. 2021

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Footnotes

This article has been updated since its original publication. See https://doi.org/10.1017/dmp.2022.247.

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