Nurse Emergency and Disaster Preparedness

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Table of Contents

Introduction
Research aims and objectives
Significance of the research
Research Methods
List of References

Introduction

Background

The city of Mecca has been attracting a large mass of people who come for the pilgrims on a regular basis. It is one of the leading tourists’ attraction centers in the Middle East. This means that mass gatherings are very common in this city. Both the Saudi nationals and citizens of the international community gather in this city regularly for prayers. Hammad, Arbon and Gebbie (2011, p. 12) define mass gathering as “Events attended by a sufficient number of people to the level that strain the planning and response resources of the host where it is being held.” On the other hand, Imran and McLeod (2012, p. 59) says, “A mass gathering shall mean one which is likely to attract 5,000 people or more and continue for one hour or more.” In mass gatherings, there are numerous risks that may affect the people because of the high number of people. Some of the common risks at such events include accidents, stampede, spread of infectious diseases, and terrorism among others (Higgins, Wainright, Ning & Carrico 2004, p. 330). In case of emergency arising from any of the risks mentioned above, there will be a strain in the local healthcare facilities. In the city of Mecca, there are four main acute hospitals where the victims of such occurrences would be rushed in order to get some help. This means that the nurses at these health facilities should be prepared for such eventualities in order to know how to deal with such situation. This will help in reducing the number of casualties from such cases of emergencies (Kija & Arbon 2008, p. 140). This research will focus on the nurse emergency and disaster preparedness during mass gatherings in the city of Mecca.

Research aims and objectives

The healthcare facilities are always ignored when planning for tourism which one of the main economic activities in this country. During the Hajj mass gatherings, a high number of Muslim faithful from this country and the international society face various risks which may lead to disaster (Arbon & Ranse 2013, p. 55). The Saudi government rarely factors in this huge population when budgeting for the hospitals. It means that these hospitals must be ready to manage the little resources they have to deal with cases of emergencies to protect lives in cases of disaster (Ranse, Shaban & Considine 2013, p. 59). The following are the specific objectives that the researcher seeks to achieve from this study.

Creation of knowledge on how to manage disasters that may strike in mass gathering within the city of Mecca.
Creation of awareness of some of the possible risk factors that may result into serious bodily harm.
Defining the roles of nurses in the events of disasters at mass gatherings
Creation of an understanding of previous disaster response experience among the current nurses in Mecca.

The above objectives will define the nature of the research. The medical practitioners in this city have limited capacity to prevent some of the risks from taking place (Duong 2009, p. 89). For instance, the nurses may not protect the masses from stampede. However, they can do something to the casualties in order to spare their lives. Finding what the medical practitioners can do, and how they can do it in the best manner possible, is the ultimate aim of this study.

Significance of the research

The city of Mecca remains one of the most important cities in Saudi Arabia, not only because of the number of tourists it attracts on a yearly basis, but also because of its symbolic nature to the people of this country. Hajj mass gatherings is common in this society and this increases chances that one of the risk factors may occur, which may lead to cases of emergency medical needs (Rassin, Avraham, Anat & Idelman 2007, p. 57). When this happens, it would mean that the hospitals will have to deal with cases beyond their capacity. The healthcare infrastructure in these four facilities may not be able to sustain the pressure of the population, and this means that the emergency unit will be faced with a massive challenge of offering healthcare services to the large crowd (Qanta, Yaseen & Ziad 2006, p. 1010). This means that it will be necessary to develop emergency and disaster preparedness measures that can be used in such cases.

This topic is interesting because it helps develop an approach that can be used by nurses at the four acute care hospitals in Mecca in cases of emergency during mass gathering (Arbon, Cusack, Ranse & Shaban 2013, p. 108). The study is particularly important to the nurses and management of these healthcare centers because it seeks to find the strategy that can be used to address such emergencies. The nurses will be prepared to deal with the emergencies when the disasters related to mass gatherings strike. They will know how to attend to as many clients as possible using the strained resources. To the management, this study will try to find a way of managing emergencies that arise from disasters in mass gatherings within the city of Mecca (Hammad, Arbon, Gebbie & Hutton 2012, p. 240). They will know how to plan for their resources in cases of emergency. The study will clearly state how these challenges can be address in a way that will minimize casualties without overstraining the existing resources. The researcher focused on the emergency department of hospitals because of the risk associated with mass gatherings. The city is sensitive to the country and any disaster may affect so many people and this may reduce its attractiveness to the international society (Williams, Maryalice & Carri 2008, p. 12). The emergency department of the hospitals needs to be ready for such occurrences in order to help minimize fatalities in case the disaster strikes.

According to Hammad, Arbon and Gebbie (2011, p. 65), people who visit this facilities need medical services because of a number of reasons, top of which is the change in the weather conditions. The locals may also need to visit healthcare facilities in case they contract infectious diseases from the visitors. The neighboring countries have several terror groups that have been targeting large crowds to unleash their terror. Although Mecca is regarded as a holy land, this may not stop them from committing crime. In fact, the mass gatherings common at Mecca could offer them a perfect opportunity to attack innocent people as a way of passing their message to people in leadership (Qanta, Barbeschi & Memish 2009, p. 230). In the past, there has not been a major disaster that has struck the mass gatherings. However, cases of infectious diseases have been common, and this always strains the facilities at the four acute care facilities in the city. Finding an appropriate solution would be very appropriate to all the stakeholders involved. This makes the research very important to the visitors, the local community, the medical practitioners, especially the nurses working in the emergency departments, and all other stakeholders who may be affected by such disasters directly or indirectly.

Research Methods

Research design

A cross-sectional survey is proposed to be used to collect data on hospital emergency and disaster preparedness from nurses working in the emergency departments of four hospitals in Mecca, Saudi Arabia. The cross-sectional survey will be conducted using self-administered questionnaire including a combination of structured and open ended questions.

Data collection

The questionnaire will be piloted and then applied amongst our hospitals in Saudi Arabia in Mecca City. The questionnaire will be circulated to managers in each of the selected hospitals via individual emails. The hospital managers will be asked to distribute this questionnaire among the nurses and other staffs in their hospitals within a period of two weeks. The questionnaire will include five main areas of questioning; demographics, knowledge, awareness, roles of nurses in disasters and the previous disaster response experience.

Data analysis

Choosing the right research method is very important in finding the solution in a given piece of research. At this section, the focus will be on the analysis of the primary data. The data collected from the registered nurses will be analyzed quantitatively in order to arrive at a given answer. As mentioned previously, this is an empirical study that will involve analyzing the information from the field in order to support a given argument or develop a new knowledge that would help improve the preparedness of the nurses when disaster strikes mass gatherings. The researcher will use SPSS (Statistical Package for Social Scientists) in order to analyze data collected from the field. SPSS software was chosen because of its ease to use and the ability to give various values whenever this is necessary. The raw data in the questionnaires will be corded in the SPSS spreadsheet. This will enable the researcher to obtain various values from the data collected. Some of the important values would be standard deviation, mean, mode, and median values. The data obtained from the spreadsheet can easily be presented in charts and figures to make it easy to understand. Some of the common figures would include graphs and charts to help summarize the information into graphics.

List of References

Arbon, P & Ranse, J 2013, Australasian emergency nurses’ willingness to attend work in a disaster, Australasian Emergency Nursing Journal, vol. 16. no. 1, pp. 52-57.

Arbon, P, Cusack, L, Ranse, J & Shaban, R 2013, Exploring staff willingness to attend work during a disaster: A study of nurses employed in four Australian emergency departments, Australasian Emergency Nursing Journal, no. 16. no. 5, pp. 103-109.

Duong, K 2009, Disaster education and training of emergency nurses in South Australia, Australasian Emergency Nursing Journal, vol. 12. no. 1, pp. 86-92.

Hammad, K, Arbon, P & Gebbie, K 2011, Emergency nurses and disaster response: An exploration of South Australian emergency nurses’ knowledge and perceptions of their roles in disaster response, Australasian Emergency Nursing Journal, vol. 7 no. 7, pp. 14, 87—94.

Hammad, K, Arbon, P, Gebbie, K & Hutton, A 2012, Nursing in the emergency department (ED) during a disaster: A review of the current literature, Australasian Emergency Nursing Journal, vol. 15. no. 5, pp. 235-244.

Higgins, W, Wainright, C, Ning, L & Carrico, R 2004, Assessing hospital preparedness using an instrument based on the Mass Casualty Disaster Plan Checklist: Results of a statewide survey, Bowling Green and Louisville, vol. 32. no. 6, pp 327-332.

Imran, K & McLeod, R 2012, Managing Hajj crowd complexity: Superior Throughput Satisfaction Health & Safety, Kuwait Chapter of Arabian Journal of Business and Management Review, vol. 2, no.4, pp. 45-59.

Kija, C & Arbon, P 2008, Are nurses ready? Disaster preparedness in the acute setting, Australasian Emergency Nursing Journal, vol. 11. no. 1, pp. 135-144.

Qanta, A, Barbeschi, B & Memish, Z 2009, The quest for public health security at Hajj: The WHO guidelines on communicable disease alert and response during mass gatherings, Travel Medicine and Infectious Disease, vol. 7. no. 22, pp. 226-230.

Qanta, A, Yaseen, A & Ziad, M 2006, Health risks at the Hajj, Review, vol. 367. no. 3, pp. 1008-1015.

Ranse, J, Shaban, R & Considine, J 2013, Disaster content in Australian tertiary postgraduate emergency nursing courses, Australasian Emergency Nursing Journal, vol. 16. no. 4, pp. 58-63.

Rassin, M, Avraham, M, Anat, N & Idelman, S 2007, Emergency Department Staff Preparedness for Mass Casualty Events Involving Children, DMR, vol. 5. no. 2, pp. 36-44.

Williams, J, Maryalice, N & Carri, C 2008, The Effectiveness of Disaster Training for Health Care Workers: A Systematic Review, Annals of Emergency Medicine, vol. 52. no. 3, pp. 1-14.

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