ABSTRACT
One of the problems faced after a disaster is health service for victims and hospitals play a critical role in handling disaster victims. Therefore, hospitals must enhance their preparedness and establish a disaster-safe environment to effectively fulfill their role as a provider of health services during a crisis. The aim of this scoping review was to identify hospital disaster preparedness tools used around the globe and to identify the critical aspects that need to be included in hospital disaster preparedness. This study used the five stages of Arksey and O'Malley's scoping review framework to determine what disaster preparedness tools can be used in a hospital setting. The electronic literature searches of English articles published between 2018 and 2023 were conducted using PubMed, Elsevier, ProQuest, ISI Web Science, and Google Scholar databases. The searched keywords were combined into several search terms such as sub-discipline, subtitle, year, language, and content type. The keywords of sub-title searching were "preparedness", "hospital" and "disaster". After applying some inclusion criteria, ten articles out of 1,221 identified records were included in the final analysis. The World Health Organization (WHO) Hospital Safety Index, WHO Hospital Emergency Checklist or their modified versions, and modified Public Health Emergency Preparedness were tools used in assessing hospital disaster preparedness. These tools evaluate some aspects such as structural safety, non-structural safety, and functional capacity. The studies indicated that each tool used to measure hospital disaster preparedness has strengths and weaknesses in each assessed aspect. Although some tools have been recommended to assess hospital disaster preparedness, assessing each tool validity and reliability are critical and needs to be conducted.
ABSTRACT
The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has burdened the health system and medical education programmes both locally and globally, requiring medical students to continue their education whilst engaging in prevention programmes to support primary health services. This study aims to describe medical students' knowledge, attitudes in the prevention of COVID-19, and to determine the relationship between the knowledge of COVID-19 preventive behaviour and attitudes towards it. This study used an analytical cross-sectional observational design with a sample of 290 students. Data were collected through a self-assessment method using a validated questionnaire. Analysis of the frequency distribution test for knowledge found that 54.1% of the respondents and 99.0% of the students had a good understanding of the mode of transmission of COVID-19. The majority of medical students (73.1%) also had a good attitude towards COVID-19 and around 84.3% of the students considered that good ethics is needed when coughing or sneezing during this pandemic. As many as 46.6% of the respondents had good preventive behaviour against COVID-19 and always imposed restrictions on using public transportation during a pandemic. The Spearman's correlation test shows a weak but meaningful relationship between knowledge (r = 0.214, p = 0.000) and COVID-19 preventive behaviour, and a significant relationship between attitudes (r = 0.477, p = 0.000) towards COVID-19 preventive behaviour. This study concludes that medical students have good knowledge, preventive behaviour and an understanding of infection risk. An enhanced knowledge and awareness will increase preventive behaviours that will provide support in controlling the disease.
ABSTRACT
Knowledge capacity plays a vital role in building community resilience to disasters. However, the problem is that there is no resilience framework that integrates the knowledge creation process. This article introduces a new framework for increasing community resilience based on knowledge creation theory (KCT). This research aims to define the elements that support the Knowledge Creation for Community Resilience (KCCR) and to gain consensus from experts on these factors. This study was conducted using semi-structured interviews with five panellists and three rounds of Delphi technique to determine the assessment of 26 factors (including six additional factors) that have been identified by experts (30, 18 and 11 experts in rounds I, II and III, sequentially). The data analysis was carried out in several stages, and included Spearman's Rank Correlation Coefficient, consensus appraisal and interrater agreement (IRA) statistical evaluation. The result of the agreement level (AL) analysis shows that the majority of the constructs (96.15%) are in the 'moderate strong' category. This study shows that there is a significant consensus (with IRA index [a wg(1)] ranging from 0.529 to 1), and panellists confirm the significance of all the key constructs. Consensus was gained from experts on seven elements that support the KCCR. This study establishes a systematic, operational and multidimensional KCCR framework that combines the concepts of knowledge creation, community resilience and disaster preparedness. This framework can be used as a qualitative instrument or guidance to build community resilience based on knowledge creation and a quantitative tool for measuring community resilience in facing disasters.
ABSTRACT
This study investigates the correlation between disaster budget, index of disaster risks and the population of 23 districts in the Aceh province, northern Indonesia. It also explores how the budget for disasters is proposed and prepared by Indonesian local governments. A descriptive quantitative approach is used to examine this relationship. Data were collected from the budgets of local governments (Badan Penanggulangan Bencana Daerah [BPBD] or local disaster management agency) and the disaster risk index. In addition, surveys were undertaken in which the respondents were the key officers in the BPBDs who are responsible for the budget and programmes to obtain detailed information about how the local government prepares their budget for disaster. By employing the Pearson's chi-square test and the Pearson correlation test, this study revealed no significant statistical relationship between the disaster budget and the level of disaster risks among districts or cities in the Aceh province, northern Indonesia. However, results show that the total budget of the local governments has a significant positive correlation with the disaster budget. The surveys also confirm the correlation between the total budget of the local government and disasters as the same budgeting procedure is applied. The result generalisability might be limited as this study only focused on one of Indonesia's provinces, Aceh. KEYWORDS: disaster risk; disaster relief planning; disaster budget; local government; tsunami; Indonesia.
