Disaster response and emergency preparedness has taken a bigger role in our daily operations since the advent of events of September 11 2001. It is essential that nurses be prepared and trained to respond to disaster incidents. Nonetheless, we are largely unaware of how our nurses feel about their readiness to respond to these disaster incidents. This study aims to understand our nurses' knowledge, skills and perception towards disaster response and emergency preparedness.

A self administered structured questionnaire survey was conducted for the nurses in our hospital. Using a 5 point Likert scale, the questionnaire covered knowledge, skills and perception of institutional and individual preparedness towards a disaster incident. The data was analyzed using SPSS 17.

A convenient sample of 1143 nurses (response rate 95.5%) was studied over a 2-month period from 1st August to 30th September 2010. 55.7% of the surveyed nurses have not attended any training in disaster response. Despite that, more than 50% of them scored correctly in term of their knowledge in different types of disaster incidents. 75.3% of them have not been trained to don the HAZMET suite within the last 2 years. 72.9% do not know where to get the HAZMET suit in the event of a chemical incident. While 80.2% felt that the institution is able to respond to any disaster incident, only 41.3% felt that they were ready. In addition, 83.6% were willing to participate in future disaster incident response training. 77.1% agreed that being able to respond to a disaster incident should be part of their professional competency.

There is a need for the hospital to incorporate disaster preparedness into nursing education curriculum as a clinical core skill to ensure that nurses are ready to respond to disaster incidents.