The level of Disaster Preparedness of Iranian Hospitals; a Systematic Review

Hospitals are considered the most important referral centers for victims at the time of disasters and accidents. Iran is one of the disaster-prone countries in the world and the unpreparedness of hospitals in the event of disaster causes a lot of damage to the country's healthcare system. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to assess the level of preparedness of Iranian hospitals for accidents and disasters through a systematic review.

The present study is a systematic review. Studies published in Persian on the level of preparedness of Iranian hospitals for accidents and disasters were searched for, using the keywords "contingencies", "disasters", "hospital preparedness", and investigated, using the Prisma checklist. Search for studies was performed in Google Scholar, Sid (Scientific Information Database), and Magiran databases without setting any time limit.

Out of the 365 articles reviewed, 33 studies were finally included in the study. 10 studies were performed in Tehran province, 5 studies were done in Kermanshah, and Ahvaz, Ilam, Mazandaran, Yazd, Markazi, Isfahan, Qazvin, Birjand, Tabriz, northern Iran, Jahrom, Zabol, Semnan, Urmia, Shiraz, Zanjan, and all of Iran were evaluated in 1 study each. Most of the studied hospitals were educational. Three studies evaluated military hospitals and one study assessed a private hospital. Among the included studies, 20 were cross-sectional descriptive studies, 12 were descriptive-analytical studies, and one was a field study. In addition, more than half of the studies reported that hospitals were moderately prepared, 7 studies concluded that the hospitals were well prepared (desirable preparedness), and 8 studies stated that the hospitals were poorly prepared (low preparedness).

The results of the present study indicated that overall, the preparedness of the hospitals in Iran is at a moderate level. It seems that crisis management teams in Iranian hospitals should prepare as much as possible, obtain the required information regarding crisis management, and plan before the occurrence of disasters so that they can make correct and logical decisions at the time of disasters and more effectively perform their role as crisis management team.