Document Type : Original Article

Authors

• . Sudip Bhattacharya
• . Amarjeet Singh ¹
• . Jayanti Semwal
• . Roy Rillera Marzo ²
• . Neha Sharma, Manish Goyal ³
• . Shaili Vyas
• . Abhay Srivastava

¹ Department of Community Medicine, PGIMER, Chandigarh

² Department of Community Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, Asia Metropolitan University, Malayasia, Masai, Johor, Malaysia

³ Department of Statistics, Panjab University, Chandigarh, India

Abstract

INTRODUCTION: Disaster can occur at any time any place. Disaster preparedness plays an important
role to reduce the loss of a community/country. The aim of this interventional study was to ascertain
the impact of a video‑based educational intervention program on improvement in knowledge and
attitude of paramedical students in a hospital.
MATERIALS AND METHODS: A pre–post study (interventional study design) was conducted on
paramedic students. Our study period was 6 months which was divided into Phases I, II, and III. For
administrative purpose, we included all paramedical students, and our sample size was 119. The
baseline assessment of knowledge and attitude of paramedic students was done by a pretested
questionnaire (Observation 1) with having a baseline scoring. After that, intervention Phase 1 was
implemented, and later, end line observation (Observation 2) was made. Changes in knowledge and
attitude were observed by the score difference (Observation 2–Observation 1). Descriptive statistics
were calculated, and the mean of cumulative score was compared using the Wilcoxon signed‑rank
test. We applied Mann–Whitney U‑test for finding associations between dependent variables with
an independent variable using SPSS version 22 (IBM, Chicago, USA) software.
RESULTS: Our baseline results showed that most of our participants had average
knowledge (54.6%), followed by poor knowledge (24.4%). Approximately one‑fifth (21.0%) of the
participants had good knowledge regarding disaster preparedness.   A significant improvement was
observed in cumulative score (P < 0.005). A significant difference was observed in knowledge and
attitude with respect to age and courses (P < 0.05). Forty percent of the students responded that
they would like to get trained by that mock drill, and 26.1% were interested in disaster preparedness
workshops in the future.
CONCLUSION: Our present study results indicate that the overall knowledge and attitude level of
the students was average and required improvement. A similar result was reported in some studies
conducted globally for the same purpose. All of our students perceived that training for disaster
preparedness is necessary for all health facilities, and it is important to have an emergency plan
and disaster management committee. Regarding training methods, most of our students liked our
interactive audiovisual method. However, their preferred methods were mock drill and workshops.
It can be arranged in the future for them.

Keywords

• Disaster
• educational programs
• emergency
• preparedness
• students
• training