ABSTRACT
Background: Worldwide disasters are a common event nowadays. A disaster is an incident that can cause massive disruption and damage. Disaster can be dramatically affected many people, either directly or indirectly. The affected people may die, injures and it also destroyed their houses, health system, and interrupted their lifeline. The study was aimed to identify the perceptions of knowledge regarding disaster management among healthcare workers in Bangladesh.Material and Methods: A total of 120 healthcare workers were selected to participate in this study using two stages of sampling technique. The study was carried out using a cross-sectional survey in the two selected medical college hospitals in Dhaka city of Bangladesh within a period of 4 months (January 2017–April 2017). The data were collected using a pre-tested self-administered semi-structured questionnaire and were analyzed using the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences ver-20.0.Results: In the present study, the mean age of the study respondents was 34.07 ± 10.64 years. About 51.7% of the study participants were female. Two-fifths (40%) of the study participants had diploma in radiology/pharmacy followed by B.Sc. in medical technology (20.8%) and MBBS (10.8%). More than three-fifths (64.2%) had < 11 years of professional experience.Conclusion: The level of good perception of knowledge of females was slightly higher than that of males. The doctors were found to have higher level of good perception of knowledge than those from other professions. The finding reported that close to nine-tenths of the study participants had good perception of knowledge regarding disaster management and the profession of the study participants was found significantly associated with the perception of knowledge regarding disaster management.
ABSTRACT
Background: Disaster causes widespread destruction, disrupting people’s lives and causing human suffering with communities finding it difficult to cope. When the disaster occurs, human beings may not have the power to stop it from occurring, nevertheless they may have the power and ability to adapt or minimize the impact of the disaster on their lives. This study was aimed to assess the level of knowledge and awareness on disaster management among medical professionals.Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted among the medical professionals from two selected medical college hospitals in Dhaka city of Bangladesh from January to April 2017. A total of 120 samples were selected purposively using two stages sampling technique. The data was collected using self-administered semi-structured questionnaire and was analysed using SPSS 20.0 version.Results: In this study half 60 (50.0%) of the study participants were in the age group 20-30 years and about 77.5% of the study participants were Muslims. About 64.2% of the study participants had less than 11 years of professional experience. Only 10 (8.3%) of the study participants had attended training on disaster management. About 30.0% of the study participants had good level of knowledge and only 49.2% had high level of awareness.Conclusions: The findings revealed that most of the study participants had not attended any training on disaster management. It also reported that the majority of the study participants had poor level of knowledge. Evacuation exercises need to be done for the entire hospital at least twice a year.