Disaster knowledge and preparedness among student nurses at a Private University

Abstract

This study aimed to determine disaster knowledge and preparedness among student nurses’ levels 1, 2 and 3 at a private university in Iloilo City, Philippines. Specifically, it aimed to determine (1) the socio-demographic characteristics of the respondents in terms of sex, year level, and type of high school they graduated from; (2) the respondents' disaster knowledge; (3) the respondents'disaster preparedness; (4) whether there is a significant relationship between the respondents' disaster knowledge and preparedness. Conducted in December 2023, this descriptive research involved randomly 251 student nurses. Data were gathered through adopted questionnaire-checklists which were duly validated and subjected to test of reliability. Statistical tools used were frequency, percentage, mean and standard deviation for descriptive statistics, meanwhile, Spearman Rho Correlation was used to set a t .05 alpha level as inferential statistics. Data analysis revealed that there is a negligible association between student nurses' disaster knowledge and disaster preparedness scores (Spearman rho = 0.04; P value = .436). This suggests that there is no statistically significant relationship between the two variables. In other words, knowing much about disasters does not necessarily translate to being more prepared for them among the student nurses studied and vice versa.