Khadija Mohamed Abdullah Al Busafi
Nursing specialty institute, Oman
Title: The extent, range and nature of resilience education for healthcare professionals working in disaster: A scoping review
Biography
Biography: Khadija Mohamed Abdullah Al Busafi
Abstract
Background & Aim: Preparedness to face challenges associated with different types of disasters and setting strategies for risk reduction may lessen the stress associated with the response process. Evidence has shown that disaster-resilience education facilitates recovery efforts of health professionals. However, the aspects of ensuring disaster resilience remain unclear and there are questions raised in the peer-reviewed literature promoting disaster resilience of health care professionals. Readiness for disaster resilience may enable healthcare professionals to resist and respond to the shock of disasters, cope with unusual situations and accept innovations to adapt to the new environment after a disaster. This leads to a question of ‘What is the extent, range and nature of resilience education for healthcare professionals working in disaster response?’
Methodology: A scoping review was used to explore the literature on resilience education of healthcare professionals. The Joanna Briggs Institute methodology was used to guide the process.
Results: Four published papers were identified and selected for inclusion in this review. From these papers, data were extracted and common themes emerged. The themes related to the nature of the educational courses for healthcare professionals working in disaster response. The continuing education and degree courses focused mainly on psychological support for healthcare professionals during disaster. The courses included multiple professionals, with half of the studies focusing on all healthcare professionals. The extent of disaster-resilience education reflects the disaster responders’ characteristics of psychological preparedness. The training resulted in a significant increase in knowledge, confidence and self-efficacy.
Conclusion: The disaster-resilience education was geographically well dispersed and covered different fields of responders involved in disaster response. The range of disaster-resilience education included multiple fields of specialties; however, half of the studies focused on all healthcare professionals without separating health professional personnel from other professionals at the hospital, focusing on their behavior towards disaster resilience and self-confidence. The courses found in the included studies were either continuous education programs or degree courses and were mainly concerned with psychological support and preparing professionals to be emotionally ready for a disaster, to have confidence and self-efficacy during a disaster and to cope with the aftermath of a disaster. The findings were not surprising, but the number of studies was fewer than anticipated considering the steady upward trend in incidence of disasters and renewed focus on the disaster workforce. A future direction for research would be a review of the literature on the effectiveness of disaster resilience-training programs for healthcare professionals over a range of disaster types and settings.