Building the resilience of Iranian hospitals to earthquake & flood disasters

Salamati Nia, SP

Abstract

For the last four decades, Iran has been experiencing an unprecedented series of disasters and has given rise to increased attention by policymakers to the country's arrangements for disaster management. A disaster event can be a severe disruption to the functioning of any community and organisation. During the last decades, the amount of disaster events has risen. The research
of disaster management has been one of the main concerns of medical doctors, managers, policymakers, and scientists since the mid-twentieth century.
There is an urgent demand to improve our understanding of disaster management preparedness and mitigation measures to keep hospitals active in terms of hospitals' importance during and post-disaster events. Collapsed or damaged hospitals, resource shortcomings, absence of a command system, triage problems, treatment, and transportation have been challenged during
previous disasters. This study researcher focuses on disaster mitigation and preparedness management associated with the events caused by natural disasters in Iranian Hospitals. The
current study was conducted to evaluate various aspects of the current medical disaster management measures against disaster managers and hospitals to improve health services
provided during disaster events.
Accordingly, this research study evaluates mitigation and preparedness in some critical elements in disaster management measures implemented in the previous natural disasters.
Implementing a comprehensive strategy would save lives and
improve the effectiveness of using available resources for injured people. All skilled medical volunteers and the military’s medical teams must also be included in this plan. According to this research, challenges against disaster, managers identifies. The data was collected through a questionnaire survey and semi-structured interviews with some experts connected with hospital activities and disaster management in the Iranian context.
This research study aims to enhance the resiliency of the Iranian hospitals from earthquakes
and floods by developing an appropriate mitigation and preparedness policy guideline.
This is done through conducting a questionnaire survey and interviewing some disaster management experts. In this research study, two different case studies were implemented to understand better the impact of natural disasters on hospitals and health services during and after disaster events. Furthermore, an expert interview was used to collect qualitative data through interviews with eight experts. These experts were from both academia and industry, and they were selected based on their experiences and engagement case studies. The multiple-case holistic design was selected for conducting this research to provide credibility to the research outcome.
Two case studies were selected to better evaluate hospitals during earthquakes and floods. The questionnaire was distributed among 134 experts. In this research, the target population was professionals involved and experienced in disaster management and hospitals in two case studies.
The findings illustrate that disaster mitigation and preparedness management are critical stages in the disaster management cycle. Efficient and effective mitigation and preparedness will
ultimately minimise the loss of life and damage to hospitals.
While there are some weaknesses and limited implementation of several elements of good practice in disaster mitigation and preparedness management in Iran's current disaster
management practices, some strengths should be built upon. The final recommendations comprise and are based on the secondary and primary data findings.
Findings illustrate that there are variations among subordinate organisations within the health
ministry with regard to different aspects of disaster management and outcomes, lack of training and disaster management knowledge, failure distribution of injured people, lack of accurate
coordination and collaboration between various organisations, and lack of regular assessment of the hospital conditions. The sets of recommendations are developed to improve the healths
services of hospitals to cope with disaster events. This study contributes to the scarce literature currently published on disaster mitigation and preparedness management connected with
hospitals. Such studies' uniqueness could be attributed to the very limited attempts made in the past to explore disaster mitigation and preparedness management in Iranian hospitals. This
study's practical contribution is the potential improvement of the current disaster mitigation and preparedness practices and disaster management systems in Iranian hospitals, which will
ultimately minimise the loss of life and damage to property. The recommendations proposed in this study could improve the immediate mitigation and escalate the disaster management
system's preparedness process for Iranian hospitals in future events.

Citation

Salamati Nia, S. Building the resilience of Iranian hospitals to earthquake & flood disasters. (Thesis). University of Salford

• Thesis Type: Thesis
• Deposit Date: May 12, 2022
• Publicly Available Date: May 12, 2022
• Award Date: Feb 1, 2021