Abstract
Introduction: Disaster damage to health systems is a human and health tragedy, results in huge economic losses, deals devastating blows to development goals, and shakes social confidence. Hospital disaster preparedness presents complex clinical operation. It is difficult philosophical challenge. It is difficult to determine how much time, money, and effort should be spent in preparing for an event that may not occur. Health facilities whether hospitals or rural health clinics, should be a source of strength during emergencies and disasters. They should be ready to save lives and to continue providing essential emergencies and disasters. Jeddah has relatively a level of disaster risk which is attributable to its geographical location, climate variability, topography, etc. This study investigates the hospital disaster preparedness (HDP) in Jeddah. Methods: Questionnaire was designed according to five Likert scales. It was divided into eight fields of 33 indicators: structure, architectural and furnishings, lifeline facilities’ safety, hospital location, utilities maintenance, surge capacity, emergency and disaster plan, and control of communication and coordination. Sample of six hospitals participated in the study and rated to the extent of disaster preparedness for each hospital disaster preparedness indicators. Two hazard tools were used to find out the hazards for each hospital. An assessment tool was designed to monitor progress and effectiveness of the hospitals’ improvement. Weakness was found in HDP level in the surveyed hospitals. Disaster mitigation needs more action including: risk assessment, structural and non-structural prevention, and preparedness for contingency planning and warning and evacuation. Conclusion: The finding shows that hospitals included in this study have tools and indicators in hospital preparedness but with lack of training and management during disaster. So the research shed light on hospital disaster preparedness. Considering the importance of preparedness in disaster, it is necessary for hospitals to understand that most of hospital disaster preparedness is built in the hospital system.
Highlights
Disaster damage to health systems is a human and health tragedy, results in huge economic losses, deals devastating blows to development goals, and shakes social confidence
Implementation of Hospital Disaster Preparedness Indicators (HDPI) in hospital areas provides a potential solution to improve the competitiveness of preparedness; the development of an assessment tool can effectively guide the implementation
The main purpose out of this paper is to investigate the HDPI listed in Table 1 that enables the Jeddah hospitals to be successfully well prepared, and afterwards to develop an assessment tool to review the hospital disaster preparedness (HDP) indicators and the guiding tools to identify the difficulties and opportunities, that provides an effective way to guide and evaluate the preparedness process
Summary
Disaster damage to health systems is a human and health tragedy, results in huge economic losses, deals devastating blows to development goals, and shakes social confidence. This study investigates the hospital disaster preparedness (HDP) in Jeddah. Methods: Questionnaire was designed according to five Likert scales It was divided into eight fields of 33 indicators: structure, architectural and furnishings, lifeline facilities’ safety, hospital location, utilities maintenance, surge capacity, emergency and disaster plan, and control of communication and coordination. Conclusion: The finding shows that hospitals included in this study have tools and indicators in hospital preparedness but with lack of training and management during disaster. The purpose of this study is to investigate the HDP and imply an assessment tool of hazard. Making hospitals and health facilities safe from disasters is an economic requirement It is a social, moral and ethical necessity of life, and the price we pay for the failure of our hospitals due to disasters is too high. In comparison to the cost of making them safe from disasters that is so tiny [1]
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