Disaster Preparedness Attributes and Hospital's Resilience in Malaysia

Disaster resilience hospital (DRH) is the hospital's ability to resist, absorb, accommodate and recover from the effects of a hazard in a timely and efficient manner. DRH includes the preservation and restoration of the hospital's essential basic structures and functions. Resilience (i.e. robustness; redundancy; resourcefulness; and rapidity) could be achieved through enhancement of preparedness attributes in terms of structural, non-structural and functional measures. However, over the past few years there is a growing body of evidence to show that the impacts of disasters are affecting negatively towards public hospitals in Malaysia. It is believed that to a certain extent the preparedness attributes of hospitals towards disaster resilience are insufficient. Hence, the purpose of this paper is twofold: to investigate the hospital preparedness attributes and resilience indicators; and to establish relationship of preparedness attributes towards hospital's resilience. Cross-sectional survey was conducted among twenty six (26) Malaysian hospitals' staff. A total 243 preparedness attributes (structural- 21; non-structural-107; and functional-115) and 23 resilience indicators (robustness- 5; redundancy-5; resourcefulness-6; and rapidity-7) were subjected to non-parametric Spearman Correlation. The results revealed that 17 preparedness attributes and 23 resilience indicators are rated 'very critical' by the respondents by which human resources & training and ability to adapt in a timely manner are ranked first. In addition, non-structural preparedness presented greater strength of correlation towards robustness; redundancy; and resourcefulness. On the contrary, the functional attributes showed higher correlation towards rapidity. The results could serve as indicators for the public hospital's stakeholders in Malaysia to improve its preparedness and enhancing its resilience.