Decision-making on Hospital Emergency Evacuation in Disasters and Emergencies: Findings From a Systematic Review

Context: Disasters are increasing worldwide, with more devastating effects than ever before. Hospitals must maintain their normal functions or have an evacuation plan due to the rate of damages at the time of a sudden disaster. The present study was conducted to determine the effective determinants and components in hospital evacuation decision- making.
Evidence Acquisition: In this systematic review study, which was conducted in 2016, bibliographies, citation databases, and other available records such as international guidelines, documents and reports of organizations and academic dissertations were used to find an answer to the following question: What are the effective components in hospital evacuation decision- making? Finally, 34 articles were included in this systematic review. This systematic review article was checked with PRISMA checklist.
The common factors affecting hospital emergency evacuation decision-making were classified into 4 general categories and 40 subcategories, which have been explored during thematic analysis. These 4 categories included hospital infrastructure consequences, threat, internal factors, and external factors. Level of risk was the most important component of threat category and it was mentioned in most of the reviewed literature. Loss of electricity and water, communication and transportation, resources such as staff, and removing patient devices were the most mentioned factors in hospital infrastructure consequences, external factors, and internal factors, respectively.
Different variables affect the process of hospital emergency evacuation decision-making. Thus, further studies are needed to develop a decision-making tool for hospital emergency evacuations in Iran.