Assessment of Disaster Preparedness Plans at Palestinian Governmental Hospitals in the West Bank-Mixed Method Approach رسالة ماجستير

Abstract

Background: Disasters pose a real threat to the individual’s lives in the event of their occurrence, especially as they may occur anywhere and at any time without prior warning, and the causes of disasters may be natural or man-made. Aims: To assess the governmental hospitals disaster preparedness plan in Palestine. Methods: The study used a mixed method approach of quantitative and qualitative descriptive approach through a performing simple randomization to recruit three government hospitals in the West Bank. The study sample was 320 doctors, nurses, administrators, and other as laboratory and radiology technicians. The researcher used a stratified random sample, 298 questionnaires were retrieved with a response rate of 93%. The Qualitative part were including Four interviews with key persons at the Palestinian ministry of health. Results: The results of this study showed that there is a significant impact of safety and security, availability of emergency management plan, readiness and training, emergency management disaster preparedness committee, and communication, warning and notification on disaster preparedness plan among West Bank governmental hospitals. Also, there is a plan to confront emergency cases that is modified annually and is based on the governorate’s emergency plan, the qualitative part was concluded that there is no comprehensive national plan to address emergency cases in Palestine. Conclusion: There are plans for disasters preparedness in government hospitals in the West Bank, where continuous training of staff is conducted, but there is no comprehensive national plan for disaster response