Background: Hospitals play an important role in protecting the health and survival of people during disasters. Despite the development of risk management programs worldwide in recent years, hospital preparedness in disasters is low and one reason for that is the lack of hospital standards for disaster preparedness. This study aims to develop hospital accreditation standards for hospital disaster risk management based on national and international experiences.
Materials and Methods: We used a mixed-method explanatory sequential approach. At first, a comparative study was conducted and the disaster risk management (DRM) hospital standards were extracted from ۱۰ selected countries, namely the United States, Canada, Australia, Malaysia, India, Thailand, Egypt, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Denmark. Standards were analyzed according to the DRM life cycle and the most comprehensive framework was chosen. For national experiences, purposeful semi-structured interviews were conducted with ۲۲ experts in disastrous events in the country and continued until the saturation stage. In addition, Graneheim and Landman’s contractual content analysis method was used for data analysis. After combining international standards and national experiences, the proposed standards were introduced and the content validity index and content validity ratio were done by ۲۵ experts.
Results: Differences were observed in the quality and quantity of the selected countries’ DRM standards. The national accreditation standards of the United States, Australia, and Canada had comprehensive standards and covered all aspects of the disaster risk management cycle. A total of ۲۷ standards from the International Standards Review and ۳۱ standards from interviews were added (a total of ۵۸ standards). The content validity results of the standards were within acceptable limits. After editing and determining the measurement criteria, the final standards were introduced.
Conclusion: This study introduces comprehensive DRM standards based on international and national documents and experiences that can be useful for policymakers and accreditation organizations in both developed and developing countries for hospital evaluation. This is also useful for hospitals as a roadmap for promoting preparedness in disasters.