Health in Emergencies and Disasters Quarterly
Year:2017 | Volume:2 | Issue:2|Papers Count:7

Background: Accurate and timely information plays an important role in disaster preparedness and this information is partly obtained through research and scientific articles. This study aimed to evaluate the publication status of scientific articles about disasters and accidents in Iranian Medical Journals from 2010 to 2015.Materials and Methods: All Persian articles on the subject of natural disasters; safety; occupational, road, or home accidents, burns, medical errors, related disasters, and emergencies were extracted. The relevant data were collected using a researcher-made checklist through the survey of selected articles.Results: The results obtained from 36341 articles out of 156 journals published by 47 medical universities showed that 599 (1.6%) articles were related to emergencies, disasters, and accidents, in which 30 (0.08%) articles were about natural disasters and 569 (1.5%) papers were about man-made accidents.Conclusion: Although, there were scientific articles dedicated to emergencies, disasters and accidents, such topics were limited. Therefore, it seems necessary to take appropriate measures aimed at greater attention to the needs of national and regional medical scientists.

Background: Many types of natural disasters are sudden and calamitous events that create a large socioeconomic burden with significant negative impact on health care, social infrastructure, and the environment; especially in the low and middle income countries; therefore, it is necessary to reduce or control this kind of disasters by understanding the specific risks and negative impacts.Recognition of disaster events helps us to plan effectively, coordinate and invest on disaster risk reduction projects.Materials and Methods: The current article was a narrative review of the epidemiological data available on natural disasters in MNA countries (Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Oman, Tunisia, and Yemen) and their trends from 1900 to 2015. The statistical data were obtained from international disaster sources (EM-DAT, DesInventar and Gapminder) and literature reviews of international reports and journals. To find related articles from journals, data bases such as Pubmed, Escopus, Google Scholar, and SID were searched for the following key word natural disasters, Middle-East, disasters and Middle-East, disasters and North Africa, natural disasters and Middle-East, natural disasters and North Africa, and disaster and trend.Results: In the last century, more than 80% of natural disaster events occurred in MNA and concentrated in just 9 countries as Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, Sudan, Somalia, Algeria, Morocco, Yemen, and Egypt. Hydrological disasters (flood and landslide) with 63% had the largest share in 2015 and were more than that of the last century. In 2015, mortality rate of flood with 11% and landslides with 32% had increasing trend compared to last century. In the last 2 years, conversely, damages and victims from flood were about 85%, which were more than those of the last century, but in landslides no change was observed. In 2015, meteorological disasters such as storms and extreme temperatures represented 19% of the total disaster occurrence that had an increasing trend compared to that of the last century with 12%. Extreme temperatures with 57% of all deaths and storm with 72% of total victims had the highest levels among other natural disasters in this period.In the previous years, the total number of death, affected people, and damages of metrological disasters had increasing trend compared to the last century. In addition, in 2015, the frequency of climatological disasters (drought) and geophysical disasters (earthquake) did not change significantly, but the number of affected people, deaths, and damages from drought and earthquakes had a noticeable decrease compared to those of the last century.Conclusion: The trends of natural disasters frequency from 1900 to 2015 in MNA has increased and effective mitigation and preparedness is necessary, both at individual and governance levels.This issue in the middle income and developing countries in MNA should be considered as a high priority in national planning.

ckground: The role of society and people in disaster risk management is prominent.However, using this potential and increasing the people’s role have always been a challenge.The purpose of this study was to find community-based management challenges in disaster risk reduction.Materials and Methods: This study was conducted with the qualitative approach and in the form of content analysis. Participants were selected purposefully and by snowball sampling out of 17 professors and managers in the field of incidents and disasters. Data were recorded and collected through semi-structured interviews. The records were transcribed and then analyzed.Results: Results included 2 main themes of egocentrism and management helplessness (failure) and 5 main categories, including inadequate attention to the nature of the risk reduction process, inadequate community resilience, ignoring social capital, inadequate planning and training, and incorrect organization, as well as 13 subcategories.Conclusion: Firstly, managers should accept the community as a major hub of the process to harness the power of community. Secondly, using capable and trained managers familiar with the concepts, literature, and challenges in the field of disasters increase participation of people in disaster risk management.

Background: The Emergency Department (ED) acts as the gatekeeper of patients’ treatment.Therefore, EDs must achieve patients’ and customers’ satisfaction by providing quality services. Patient’s satisfaction and experiences are important parts of the health care system, however, few studies have qualitatively examined this topic from patients’ perspective. This study aimed to assess patients’ perception and experiences about the quality of care provided by health system in EDs.Materials and Methods: The study data, analyzed by content analysis, were collected via semi-structured interviews with 45 patients hospitalized at different wards, who referred from ED. The data were analysed by the proposed method.Results: The finding of this study revealed that patients’ experiences were classified into five main categories: patient’s satisfaction, dissatisfaction, interpretation, patient’s companion role, and advices. Also patient’s satisfaction and dissatisfaction each included subcategories of environment, medical staff, hospital management, information and education factor, and patient’s rights. Therefore, all factors in subcategories are effective in satisfaction or dissatisfaction and other categories. According to the patients, weakness or strength and optimum performance in every category affect their perception of the quality of care.Conclusion: Patients’ experiences about care services in Ed depend on many factors, which their improvement is not easy to accomplish. Obviously, using this information may facilitate this work and help so much in providing patients’ health care at EDs. Also, using this researchbased instrument can provide valuable information for improving clinical practice. This information can be used for preparing standard questionnaires, too.

Background: Traffic accidents are among major causes of death all over the world. In Iran, it has become a social problem, with lots of people involved in; and the youth include the most victims of traffic accidents. The main objective of this research is to review the experience of the youth (18–24 years old in Tehran, Iran) with traffic accidents, and to develop a model to specify the factors.Materials and Methods: This study is based on Grounded Theory, in which a sample group of 50 young people, 18–24 years old, in Tehran, Iran, were selected and interviewed, using stratified purposive and snowball sampling method. Data is mainly collected by interviewing the youth in 7 key topics. To analyze the data, Grounded Theory is used through production of themes, components and concepts.Results: There are 11 general components for traffic accidents according to the ideas of the youth which will come in 3 categories including: individual factors (emotions, sensorymotor skills, and physical-mental health); environmental factors (road and traffic problems, a companion, using cellphone, or front individual, including carless drivers or passersby); and underlying factors (gender, legal and cultural infrastructures). And finally, the core category of carelessness, which is the leading cause in traffic accidents.Conclusion: The findings indicate that a chain of various factors may cause traffic accidents with lots of devastating consequences. It is therefore necessary to modify driving culture, to internalize the attitude of caution, to use polyhedral strategies, and to apply them all correctly.

Background: Workplace creates physical, social. and mental tensions, each of them affects the People’s health. Meanwhile, pre-hospital emergency care staff, because of the special nature of their jobs, are exposed to the tensions of emergency situations, which can affect their health.Therefore, this study was conducted to examine the relationship between job burnout and mental health in pre-hospital emergency staff of Qom Province.Materials and Methods: In this descriptive, cross-sectional study, 150 personnel of “Qom 115 Emergency Care” were recruited in the study using census method. The study data were gathered using questionnaires of “background and clinical Information”, “mental health”, and “job burnout.” Then, the obtained data were analyzed using SPSS13 and central indices, Pearson correlation test, and multiple linear regression statistical tests were run.Results: The average (SD) age of the participants was 30.8 (5.8) years. The average (SD) values of job burnout and mental health were 69.43 (12.4) and 60 (14.1), respectively. According to Pearson correlation test, the values of the job burnout and mental health had a significant negative correlation (r=-0.8) with each other. The results of multiple linear regression test showed that the correlation of the job burnout and mental health considering the confounding variables was significant (P=0.05).Conclusion: Pre-hospital employed personnel have desirable mental health and job burnout.Furthermore, improved mental health results in decreasing job burnout. Therefore, it is advisable to consider necessary facilities for caring oneself.

Annually, children as a major group are affected in disasters worldwide. Resilience terminology is appeared in disaster risk reduction to improve more attention paid on human ability instead of concentration on his vulnerability. It seems that child resiliency may be the best approach to decrease the vulnerability. Although there are lots of studies on resiliency, children resiliency in disasters seems to be a unique field to consider. The current systematic review aimed at synthesizing the evidence of the children resiliency indicators in natural disasters to identify their capacity and improve their ability against the disaster consequences. The current systematic review was conducted on the children resiliency in articles regarding natural disaster situation that extracted indicators/factors to improve children resiliency in natural disasters. Four main electronic databases which cover such articles were searched including PubMed, Scopus, Web of Science, and Pycinfo. Furthermore, experts were asked to identify verifiable grey literatures. EndNote software version X7 was used to manage searching the databases, screening duplications, and extracting irrelevant articles. Search strategy was defined by the current review authors. Specific syntax was used for each main database. A period was considered to search the databases. The evaluation of the articles was conducted based on PICO defined according to the research question to include and exclude the articles. Moreover, the qualitative assessment and review instrument (QARI) checklist from JBI (Joanna Briggs Institute Reviewers’ Manual: 2014 edition) was used to assess the quality criteria. It is a quality context focused on human psychosocial behavior with specific group called children, adolescents, teenagers, and youths, but the current systematic review called them under eighteen-year-old children according to the definition of the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF). On the other hand, the QARI data extraction instrument was also used according to the research question.The current systematic literature review determined the tangible criteria of child resiliency was valuable for decision makers, community, researchers, families, and the people concerned about children and also disaster situations. In this way, in disaster situations they could evaluate the difference between resilient children vs. non-resilient ones; the impacts are limited to the disaster, but also long-time after the disaster.