Background: Iran is exposed to a wide range of natural hazards. The occurrence of unexpected disasters and incidents is mostly destructive and devastating. In such circumstances, the community’s ability to meet healthcare needs and demands experiences great challenge. Hospitals are the primary healthcare providers in the communities, and their preparedness is crucial in saving lives during a disaster. Given the importance of hospital risk management program, in this study, we examined the effect of comprehensive risk management on the preparedness of Rofeide Rehabilitation Hospital.
Materials and Methods: This is a pretest–posttest quasi-experimental study. The data were assessed by National Standard Tool through nine components. Before the intervention, the hospital preparedness was assessed using the standard tool through interviews and observations and also completed with the cooperation of Hospital Risk Management Committee. The intervention was designed in two parts including holding a two-day workshop on hospital preparedness for senior managers of hospital and nursing managers. In the next step, the risk assessment, preparation of response plan, and establishment of incident command system were conducted. At the end, the hospital preparedness was compared linearly before and after the intervention.
Results: The hospital preparedness increased from poor to a moderate level by 48 points. Six out of 9 hospital preparedness components including command and control, communications, increased capacity, the continuation of vital services, procurement and logistics, and recovery after disasters were found to be improved after the intervention, and only three components including safety and security, triage, and staffing did not significantly improve.
Conclusion: Considering the positive impact of the implementation of the risk management program on the preparedness of Rofeide Rehabilitation Hospital and promotion of its preparedness level from poor to moderate, as well as relatively high vulnerability of hospitals against internal and external risks, national hospitals are recommended to use the comprehensive hospital risk management model to be more prepared for disasters.