Evacuation of hospitals in disasters
Citation: Yaghoubi T, Ardalan A, Zavareh DK, et al. Decision-making on hospital emergency evacuation in disasters and emergencies: findings from a systematic review. Iranian Red Crescent Medical Journal. 2017;19(11):e14214.
Language: Abstract and full text available in EN.
Free to view: Yes.
Funding sources: The authors of the review reported that they had no external funding for this review.
What is this? In this systematic review, the authors searched for studies of decision-making about hospital evacuation in disasters and emergencies. They restricted their searches to articles published in English since 1 January 2000 and did the search in April 2016. They included 34 articles.
What was found: Factors that affected hospital evacuation decision-making during disasters and emergencies were classified into four categories: (1) threat (e.g., level of risk and disaster severity); (2) hospital infrastructure (e.g., loss of electricity and water, and loss of generators); (3) external factors (e.g., physical access and transportation); and (4) internal factors (e.g., resources such as staff, and number of patients).
The type of disaster was found to be the main factor associated with hospital evacuation decision-making on the basis of the risk to the safety of staff and patients.
Successful emergency evacuation preparedness plans included adequate support and equipment, communication, transportation, resources such as staff and effective intersectoral coordination.
Implications: The authors of the review concluded that quick decision-making and reasoning play an important role in effective management of disasters in hospitals. They hoped that their review would contribute to the development of a decision-making tool to facilitate hospital emergency evacuation in cases of disaster and emergency.
Other considerations: The authors of the review discussed their findings in the context of place of residence, occupation, and time-dependent relationships (during and after health emergencies and disasters).
This summary was prepared by Yasmeen Saeed, checked by Cristián Mansilla and Ana Pizarro, and finalized by Mike Clarke.
Evidence Gaps: This review identified one main gap:
| Evidence gap | Classification | Population/setting identified | Study type |
| ‘Further studies are needed to develop a decision-making tool for hospital emergency evacuations in Iran’’ | More research is needed | Hospital emergency evacuations | N/A |
These gaps were identified up to April 2016 with no geographical restrictions. An updated search was conducted on 3 October 2023 to check if new studies have filled these gaps, finding:
- 1 Systematic review of evaluation tools for hospital disaster preparedness might contribute to partially filling one of the partially filled gaps because it somewhat provides an interesting perspective with tools and checklists.
This evidence gap was identified, extracted, and classified by Ana Beatriz Pizarro and Jawaria Karim. Updated searches were carried out by Jane McHugh. Ana Beatriz Pizarro assessed the search results to address the gaps, and the findings were checked and finalized by Cristián Mansilla. The methodology we used to assess each gap can be found here.