Abstract

Background: Disasters are contingent and unpredicted and can only be dealt by effective disaster management plans. Disaster never happened does not mean, it cannot happen. Medical internship students can be proving useful medical workforce in such situation. Medical intern students need to know basic strategies carried out in disaster management plan.

Objective: To access the knowledge, attitudes, and practices of medical internship students regarding disaster preparedness.

Materials and Methods: Study design is facility-based, descriptive, cross-sectional survey. The study population included the medical internship students. The study duration was 1 month. The study was conducted utilizing a self-administered, pretested, prestructured questionnaire.

Result: Eighty-seven of the 102 internship students completed a self-administered questionnaire. The response rate was 85.29%. Medical internship students exhibit an excellent basic knowledge of disaster plan and preparedness in the hospital. Their awareness and attitude for the disaster plan and preparedness were significantly positive. They were deficient in the knowledge and attitude regarding their functions during drill. The practices regarding disaster preparedness training and performance of drills were largely negative, and sincere work needs to be done in this direction. Majority of students responded positively to include the disaster training in internship program.

Conclusion: It can be concluded that the level of practice was largely negative with acceptable knowledge and positive attitude regarding disaster preparedness in medical internship students.

Key words: Disaster, preparedness, emergency, medical, internship