Educational needs of emergency nurses according to the emergency condition preparedness criteria in hospitals of Tabriz University of Medical Sciences 2011

Because of increased critical situation in the world, it is essential for all health care professionals, especially nurses, to be ready to manage emergency situations. T his study assessed the educational nee ds of nurses for critical situations preparedness on which, educational planning could be done. According to a d escriptive cross-sectional study design, emergency nurses (No. 140) in Tabriz’s educational hospitals selected. Emergency Preparedness Information Questionnaire (EPIQ) was used as a tools to assess preparedness of nurse parts. The questionnaire consisted of two parts. The part one, consisted of demographic profile questions and part 2, EPIQ, included of 44 questions in the eight subs-scales. Data analyzed by using SPSS ver. 17 software. Data analysis showed 66.6% of samples were female. 44% of the nurses had no experience of s pecial training in crisis situations. The total score of emergency condition preparedness of sample was (2.30 ± 0.97); the lowest and highest scores of the subject was Reporting and Accessing Critical Resources subscale (2.03 ± 0.9) and Triage subscale (2.51 ± 0.7) respectivly. The mean scores of each items, in all eight sections (e xcept triage), were moderate to low. According to the results, the emergency nurses are not prepared enough to respond appropriately in crisis situations. Therefore crisis situations trainings should be offered for the nurses as Continuing education. In addition, the development of crisis nursing courses in nursing post graduate departments is suggested.