Hospital Preparedness Assessment Instruments in Chemical Incidents: A systematic literature review

Abstract

Background: Chemical incidents are among the most frequent technological disasters that have occurred frequently in recent years. Among the organizations operating in disaster response, hospitals, as the primary unit of care, play the greatest and most critical role. Hence, providing appropriate measures that lead to minimizing the effects of these events is raised as one of the health system's priorities, so this study was carried out with the aim of systematic review on hospital preparedness instruments in chemical incidents

Methods: This systematic review was carried out according to the Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses guidelines . In this aim, through December 2020, 6 electronic databases were searched in MEDLINE (PubMed, Scopus, ISI Web of Science, ProQuest, Embase, and Cochrane) for the following key words: hospital, preparedness, chemical incidents, instrument.

Results: Out of 7794 articles that were screened, 13 articles meet the inclusion criteria for entering the process of final analysis. Most studies were cross-sectional, two were cohort, and three studies were conducted by a qualitative method. The result showed that none of the evaluated checklists and tools included all dimensions required for an appropriate hospital preparedness evaluation in chemical incidents.

Conclusion: Based on the results of this investigation, there is no comprehensive tool for assessing hospital preparedness in chemical incidents. The data of this survey can be employed as a guideline for policymakers and managers of medical centers for planning in dealing with chemical incidents.