User Awareness on Fire Escape in Hospital Building in Perak

Abstract

A healthcare building is a place for the patient’s treatment. Hospital resilience is defined as the medical facility's capacity to withstand a disaster, maintain and expand their medical capacity, and respond to a sudden increase in patient demand. There has been a global outcry from fire outbreaks with hospital building being affected. From 2010 – 2019, 14 cases of deathliest fire happened in the hospital building around the globe. All of these fatalities occurred as a result of the failure of fire escape routes, locked exits, lack of staff evacuation training, lack of awareness, and lack of safety measures, particularly on the fire escape itself. The leading causes of fire outbreak are human factors such as carelessness, negligence and lack of fire safety awareness. Therefore, this research intended to evaluate the level of user’s awareness towards fire escape in hospital. Questionnaire survey were distributed to 90 respondents who is user of the hospital. The results were analysed using SPSS descriptive analysis and presented in the table form. Based on the analysis, 90% of the respondents are aware and strongly aware. The three top ranking of user’s awareness are using a staircase is much safer instead of using lifts, people will be warned if a fire is discovered, there is a person responsible in case of fire and the existence of fire escape in the hospital. It is recommended that the hospital management share and provide information for the users regarding the nearest fire escape available to the user. As this paper only considers the level of awareness on fire escape in hospital, further study is needed to identify in detail the design criteria of fire escape in hospital building.