The Effect of Disaster and Emergency Management Presidency Disaster Trainings on Nursing Students' Perception of Disaster Management

Abstract

In the aftermath of disasters, health professionals and their knowledge and skills about disasters are of vital importance for the outcomes of the process. Nurses constitute the largest occupational group among health professionals in the world, and nursing students are also known as the largest group among health students. This study was conducted to examine the effect of Disaster and Emergency Management Presidency disaster trainings on nursing students' perception of disaster management. The quasi-experimental study in pretest-posttest design was conducted in the fall semester of 2022-2023 at X University, Faculty of Health Sciences, Department of Nursing in İzmir. The population of the study consisted of 4th grade students (n:43) enrolled in the "Disaster Nursing" course in the Department of Nursing. No sample selection was made and all students who volunteered to participate in the study and completed the forms completely were included in the study (n:42). "Personal information form" and "Disaster Management Perception Scale" were used to collect the data. The research data were collected face-to-face by the researcher in the first week of the disaster nursing elective course (pre-test) and 14 weeks later (post-test). The mean age of the nursing students participating in the study was 21.71±0.86 and 76.2% of them were female. Of the nursing students, 83.3% reported that they had disaster experience, 92.9% reported that they did not care for disaster victims, and 92.9% reported that they participated in disaster drills. While the pre-test mean score of the disaster management perception scale was 86.42 ± 7.81, the post-test mean score increased to 110.64 ± 10.33 (p<0.05). With these results, it is seen that there is a difference between the pre-test scores and the scores of nursing students on the disaster management perception scale and its sub-dimensions in the post-test. It was observed that disaster trainings positively improved the disaster management perception of nursing students.