The Necessity of Nurses Awareness in Biological Attacks

Biological events are one of the threats in today’s world. Recent advances in the life sciences and the misuse of scientific research by terrorist groups have led to biological agents becoming a deadly weapon that poses a serious threat to both national security and public health. Because in biological disasters, emergency personnel and health care providers, including nurses, are considered as the first line of treatment in the face of patients, it is essential to have sufficient knowledge of the risks of biological disasters to help and treat casualties. This requires continuous training. Experts believe that the most important point in managing a crisis is to create awareness and continuous and dynamic education in people to transfer their knowledge to other people to create a safe environment for society. The purpose of this study was to investigate the need for nurses’ awareness to deal with biological attacks.

This article is a review study that examines and collects information by searching the library resources and electronic databases of PubMed, Scienec Direct and SID in the years 2000-2019 using keywords. Bioterrorism, biological attacks, biological weapons, awareness and nursing were performed.

The results indicate that the knowledge of medical staff and nurses about crisis management of biological events and related factors, biological attacks and methods of treatment of infections caused by it is low. Low level of knowledge and awareness leads to poor performance in the face of disasters and inefficiency of the crisis response and management system. Therefore, in order to ensure the health and safety of the society in order to manage all kinds of man-made disasters, training an experienced and skilled nursing staff is an obvious thing that is necessary to improve the knowledge and awareness of nurses.

Discussion and Conclusion:

Hospitals have an important role in crisis management of various disasters, especially biological disasters, and in this regard, the role of nurses as the majority of community health care providers is very important. In a proper health care system, promoting knowledge and awareness about the causes and effects of biological events and crisis management is a necessity. Therefore, it seems necessary to discuss biological disaster education and develop various training programs to improve the level of knowledge and skills of nurses.