Abstract

Purpose: The Essentials of Baccalaureate Education for Professional Nursing Practice state that graduates should be able to use clinical judgment and make decisions during disaster situations. All nurses need training in emergency preparedness and this should occur during their initial nursing education program declares the International Council of Nurses. The American Nurses Association supports nurses being competent to respond to disasters and provide care.

The government of the United States has a national preparedness goal to improve capacity to respond to incidents. Additionally, the United Nations has an international day for disaster reduction that occurs yearly on October 13.

Faculty at Texas A&M University-Commerce Nursing Department decided to develop a disaster drill for the senior community health clinical nursing students to take place during October 2014.

Methodology: A review of the literature was completed using terms "disaster drill", "disaster preparedness", and "undergraduate nursing" from 2008-2014. A total of twelve articles and five resources were identified. The references for these were reviewed for other relevant articles. Seventeen articles that applied to the identified population and content were reviewed.

Findings: There is limited evidence regarding disaster preparedness for undergraduate nursing students. Studies on registered nurses indicated that nurses felt the content was important and most had not received any education or training during their nursing program. Faculty primarily supported having disaster preparedness in the undergraduate curriculum. Students that participated in drills felt it was useful and they used the knowledge and skills they had received during their nursing program. There are no uniform competencies for preparing for a disaster drill and methods of providing the experience to students are varied.

Implications for Nursing: Further research is needed on disaster drills for undergraduate baccalaureate nursing students. A challenge is determining the best practice for content to be included in the experience. In addition, the method of presenting the experience to the students needs to be evaluated.

Author Details

Bonnie L. Smithers, MSN, RN, FNP-C and Monica L. Tenhunen, DNP, RN, GNP-BC

Sigma Membership

Iota Nu at-Large

Lead Author Affiliation

Texas A&M University-Commerce, Commerce, Texas, USA

Type

Poster

Format Type

Text-based Document

Study Design/Type

Literature Review

Research Approach

N/A

Keywords:

Disaster Drill, Nursing Students, Literature Review

Conference Name

Sigma Beta Chi Chapter Annual Conference

Conference Host

Beta Chi Chapter,Northwestern State University

Conference Location

Shreveport, Louisiana, USA

Conference Year

2015

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.

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All permission requests should be directed accordingly and not to the Sigma Repository.

All submitting authors or publishers have affirmed that when using material in their work where they do not own copyright, they have obtained permission of the copyright holder prior to submission and the rights holder has been acknowledged as necessary.

Review Type

Abstract Review Only: Reviewed by Event Host

Acquisition

Self-submission

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Disaster preparedness for undergraduate baccalaureate nursing students

Shreveport, Louisiana, USA

Purpose: The Essentials of Baccalaureate Education for Professional Nursing Practice state that graduates should be able to use clinical judgment and make decisions during disaster situations. All nurses need training in emergency preparedness and this should occur during their initial nursing education program declares the International Council of Nurses. The American Nurses Association supports nurses being competent to respond to disasters and provide care.

The government of the United States has a national preparedness goal to improve capacity to respond to incidents. Additionally, the United Nations has an international day for disaster reduction that occurs yearly on October 13.

Faculty at Texas A&M University-Commerce Nursing Department decided to develop a disaster drill for the senior community health clinical nursing students to take place during October 2014.

Methodology: A review of the literature was completed using terms "disaster drill", "disaster preparedness", and "undergraduate nursing" from 2008-2014. A total of twelve articles and five resources were identified. The references for these were reviewed for other relevant articles. Seventeen articles that applied to the identified population and content were reviewed.

Findings: There is limited evidence regarding disaster preparedness for undergraduate nursing students. Studies on registered nurses indicated that nurses felt the content was important and most had not received any education or training during their nursing program. Faculty primarily supported having disaster preparedness in the undergraduate curriculum. Students that participated in drills felt it was useful and they used the knowledge and skills they had received during their nursing program. There are no uniform competencies for preparing for a disaster drill and methods of providing the experience to students are varied.

Implications for Nursing: Further research is needed on disaster drills for undergraduate baccalaureate nursing students. A challenge is determining the best practice for content to be included in the experience. In addition, the method of presenting the experience to the students needs to be evaluated.