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Abstract

Background: Research shows that nurses are often ill-prepared for disaster response. A survey conducted by the Georgia Department of Public Health Office of Nursing in April of 2021, demonstrated that 45% of the public health nurses surveyed had never deployed to a mass congregate shelter, and 43% reported they had no formal training related to emergency preparedness or mass sheltering. The purpose of this pilot study was to measure public health nurses’ improvement in familiarity with emergency preparedness and disaster response core competencies as defined by the Emergency Preparedness Information Questionnaire (EPIQ) after a focused educational program and tabletop workshop.

Methods: This project used a pre-and post-survey descriptive survey design, integrated six education modules delivered via an asynchronous learning platform, and participation in one synchronous interactive workshop.

Results: Pre- and post-responses to individual items in the EPIQ survey were compared using a paired samples t-test to determine if any significant change occurred (ɑ = 0.05). In addition, an overall familiarity score was computed as the sum of responses for each participant in the EPIQ survey (max of 90) and compared using a pre to post paired t-test to determine if there was an overall statistical change. A total of 249 Georgia department of public health nurses participated in the Emergency Preparedness and Mass Sheltering training. The overall familiarity score showed a statistically significant improvement (p < .001; 98% confidence interval) related to emergency preparedness core competencies with an average pre-survey familiarity score of 57.78 and an average post-survey familiarity score of 70.43.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 4.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.

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