Nurses' perceived emergency preparedness knowledge: An opportunity for improvement.

OBJECTIVE: This study aimed to provide foundational data supporting the need for nursing education focused on emergency preparedness and response for nursing staff.

DESIGN: This study is a cross-sectional, quantitative, descriptive, correlational quality improvement study.

SETTING: The study location is a Midwest healthcare system comprised of 14 acute care facilities including pediat-ric and adult level I trauma centers, a burn center, and a fully dedicated pediatric hospital; five long-term care facilities; 230 ambulatory sites; 4,200 employed providers; and a health plan.

PARTICIPANTS: A convenience sample of 5,172 currently employed nurses.

MAIN OUTCOME MEASURE: The main outcome of this study is the documentation of overall familiarity with emer-gency preparedness and response knowledge among nursing staff. Logistic ordinal regression statistical analysis was completed to determine the significance of individual domains impacting the overall familiarity score.

RESULTS: Findings based on the results of the "overall familiarity with response activities related to a large-scale emergency incident" question documented most staff (78.45 percent) have little or no familiarity with their role in dis-aster response. Six domains or focused education areas were identified as having a statistically significant impact (p < 0.0001 - p = 0.0195) on the results of the overall familiarity question.

CONCLUSIONS: These study results support the need for more education (academic and/or institutional) related to nursing emergency preparedness and response.