Effect of Interventions on Hospital-Based Health Care Professionals’ Knowledge and Skills in Disaster Preparedness: A Systematic Review

Abstract

Introduction: Health care professionals have a crucial role to play in every stage of preparing for and managing disasters. Thus, it is essential to equip health care professionals with the knowledge, skill, and competency to ensure they can adequately prepare to respond to disasters. The aim of our systematic review is to describe and evaluate the effect of educational interventions on hospital-based health care professionals’ knowledge, skills, and competencies pertaining to disaster preparedness. Methods: The review was conducted on research articles published between 2013 and 2023, sourced from five databases: CINAHL, Medline, Embase, SCOPUS, and ERIC. An intervention complexity assessment tool for systematic reviews was adapted to judge the level of intervention complexity. Results: A total of 11,688 citations were screened for eligibility, and 53 studies met the inclusion criteria. Notably, 74% of included studies focused on knowledge assessment. Judging the complexity of intervention revealed that 60% of the included interventions scored moderate complexity, and 19% scored high complexity. Notably, all high-complexity interventions resulted in significant improvements in outcomes. Conclusion: This review demonstrates that knowledge, skills, and competencies of health care professionals and students can be enhanced through targeted disaster preparedness educational interventions. High-complexity interventions were especially successful in improving the disaster preparedness of health care participants.