Saturday, 21 July 2018
Purpose: Disasters have been treating people’s lives around the world recently. However, evidence examining the readiness for disaster management competency and disaster-nursing skills based on objective structured clinical examination (OSCE) among hospital nurses remain limited. Therefore, this study investigated the predictors of readiness for disaster management competency and disaster-nursing skills based on OSCE among hospital nurses.
Methods: A cross-sectional study using stratified random sampling initially to recruit 365-registered nurses in a military medical center. Readiness for disaster management competency was assessed by a reliable, well-valid, 40-item, and self-administered questionnaire with four domains (preparedness competency, self-protection, emergency response, clinical nursing competency). Then we randomly selected half of them to participate in an OSCE for evaluating their disaster-nursing skills. During the OSCE test with a well-valid and an internal consistency of Cronbach's Alpha 0.90 of the OSCE checklist, all participants were evaluated by three OSCE examiners, who had received OSCE examiner training prior to the OSCE test, and had a 0.77-0.86 of inter-rater reliability. Generalized linear models were applied to appraise the relationship between readiness for disaster-management competency and disaster-nursing skills and to explore the predictors of readiness for disaster management competency and disaster-nursing skills based on OSCE among hospital nurses.
Results: Among the 365 recruited nurses with aged 32.6 years, participants with longer length of nursing work, higher educational level, working unit at critical care units or emergency room, and having previously received disaster training were associated with better readiness for disaster-management competency. One hundred sixty-eight nurses with aged 34.1 years and 10.1-year length of nursing work, completed the OSCE of disaster-nursing skills, showed that male nurses, higher nursing ladder, and having previously received disaster training had better disaster-nursing skills. Besides, nurses with higher readiness for disaster-management competency predicted better disaster-nursing skills.
Conclusion: Disaster-related training is required in continuous nursing education program, and in preparing nurses to recognize and improve their readiness for disaster management competency and disaster-nursing skills.