Evaluation of The Republic of Turkey Ministry of Health Sakarya University Training and Research Hospital employees' individual preparedness for earthquake and related factors

INTRODUCTION AND AIM: Throughout history, large and destructive earthquakes occurred in Turkey and Sakarya which are located in one of the three major seismic zones in the world. Sakarya is one of the provinces that experienced the effects of the 17 August 1999 Earthquake, one of the most devastating earthquakes in the twentieth century, the most. After natural disasters such as earthquakes, healthcare professionals have many responsibilities during the disaster response period. In order to ensure that healthcare professionals can respond to disasters such as earthquakes organizationally, their individual preparedness should be evaluated in order to understand how much they can internalize their individual disaster preparedness and put it into practice. This study aims to determine the individual earthquake preparedness of the employees of Sakarya University Training and Research Hospital, which is a tertiary health institution in Sakarya, and to determine the factors related to their earthquake preparedness. MATERIALS AND METHODS: This cross-sectional study was carried out at the Republic of Turkey Ministry of Health Sakarya University Training and Research Hospital between May 2019 and July 2019 with 421 hospital employees. A 56-item questionnaire was conducted in face-to-face interviews in which some sociodemographic characteristics of the participants, their history of earthquake experiences, some characteristics of the house they live in and individual earthquake preparedness behaviors were questioned. In statistical analysis, mean, standard deviation (SD), median, minimum and maximum value, number (n), percentage (%) and Chi Square (2) Test were used. RESULTS: Out of 421 hospital employees who participated in the survey, 264 (62.71%) were female and 157 (37.29%) were male. The average age of participants was founded to be 35.84 ± 8.91 years. While 60.52% (n=255) of the hospital employees participated in the study were health care professionals, 39.43% (n=166) were the staff who were not health care professionals. 31.59% of the participants stated that they made a plan or talked about preparing for a big and destructive earthquake together with their family members, 36.58% stated that they fixed the large and heavy furniture on the wall in their homes and 10.69% said they had a disaster and emergency bag in their homes. It was found out that those who are married, those who have children, those with an education level of associate degree and below, those who are homeowners, those who experienced big and destructive earthquakes, those who were injured or have relatives injured in an earthquake have an individual earthquake preparedness significantly higher than those who are not married, those who have no children, those with an education level of bachelor's degree and above, those who are not homeowners, those who did not experience big and destructive earthquakes, those who were not injured or did not have a relative injured in an earthquake. CONCLUSION: As a result of this study, it is observed that, individually, hospital employees are not prepared enough for an earthquake. The insufficiency of hospital employees' individual preparedness for disasters such as earthquakes is an obstacle to organizational response capacity in case of possible disasters. Preparedness of health care professionals and other hospital workers should be further developed so that they can ensure the safety of the community and themselves.