Evaluation of public hospitals managers in termsof disaster management: the case of Van province

Disasters occur at unexpected moments. When they do, it becomes a more difficult situation to deal with. As a matter of fact, our country has recently switched from crisis management to risk management precisely for this reason. The destruction caused by the disasters, the loss of life and property varies according to the size of the disasters. Unfortunately, our country is facing many disasters. Hospitals are the first place where casualties and injuries due to disasters will come to an end. When we look at the number of hospitals in our country, we see that state hospitals play a major role. Hospitals in our country are already busy enough. However, in disaster situations, serious capacity and performance increase is needed. At this point, the knowledge, attitudes and behaviors of hospital administrators who are knowledgeable about importanceof disaster and emergency situations. Our cityVan is faced with important disasters. In our study, we aimed to measure the knowledge, attitudes and behaviors of the state hospitals managers working in the city of Van. General Scanning model was used in our study. The participants of the research consisted of the Deputy Director of the Van citystate hospitals managers and 47 people working in the upper positions. The study started in 2021 and it was aimed to reach the entire universe (N=65). However, due to the Covid-19 pandemic still experienced in our country, Medical staffs in our country are working very intensively. Therefore, 73% (n=47) of the universe could be reached. In order to obtain the data, data were collected in digital platform from the web site named surveey.com. The questionnaire consists of 2 parts. In the first part, demographic characteristics, and in the second part, the Information, Attitude and Behavior Scale about Disaster, which consists of 3 sub-dimensions and 38 questions in the 5-point Likert type used by Kiraz (2018), was used. As a result of our study, it is seen that the disaster preparedness level of the participants in the research is sufficient. It was concluded that the attitudes of those aged 31-40 were significantly higher than those of other age groups (p<0.05). Apart from this, it was determined that knowledge, attitudes and behaviors did not show significant variability according to demographic characteristics. It has been observed that the rate of receiving disaster education is at a high level, but the rate of having disaster and emergency kits is low. In our study, it was observed that there was a proportional increase in attitude and behavior with the increase in knowledge.