Surgical registrars knowledge, attitudes and practices regarding hospital disaster preparedness across 3 tertiary hospital in Gauteng

Abstract

This study seeks to serve as a baseline survey of the knowledge, attitudes and practices (KAP) of surgical registrars concerning hospital disaster preparedness across 3 tertiary hospitals in Gauteng. This is owing to the fact that a perusal of the relevant literature reveals that while considerable research exists for the assessment of hospital disaster preparedness within an international context, there was a lack of information pertaining to the South African setting. A stratified random sampling process was applied to 30 surgical registrars who were asked to complete a self-administered questionnaire. Thus the study design was a cross sectional descriptive study of the surgical registrars working across 3 tertiary hospitals in Gauteng. A response rate of 83% was achieved. The study concluded that while 80% of surgical registrars surveyed had an excellent level of knowledge about hospital disaster preparedness, only 52% of the respondents have positive attitudes towards hospital disaster preparedness. An overwhelming majority of the surgical registrars (84%) reported poor practices concerning hospital disaster preparedness. The findings of this study has lead to the following key recommendations being made: a) the need for a dedicated national hospital disaster preparedness fund, b) the provision of regular in-service training on hospital disaster preparedness with special attention being given to registrars with greater than 11 years of clinical experience c) need for hospital disaster preparedness training to adhere to some form of quality control d) setting up of a task team to conduct regular audits on the practices of hospitals in terms of disaster preparedness.