Assessment of the Incident Command System Preparedness of the Hospitals in ‎Qom, Iran

Background and aim: Hospital and pre-hospital emergencies are the first lines of coping and dealing with emergencies as well as emerging crises of special status. Developing and improving the readiness of these centers is considered as the main component for success in the Universities of Medical Sciences. The purpose of this study was to assess the preparedness of the incident command system in Qom hospitals Materials and Methods: This descriptive-analytic study was done on 120 senior managers, nursing directors, administrative and financial members of the Crisis Committee of 7 hospitals in Qom. Data were collected using the standard disaster preparedness questionnaire including 4 domains. Data collection was done by the researcher through observation, interview, and committee's documents review. The collected data were analyzed by SPSS 20 software using descriptive-analytical statistics, such as mean, standard deviation, and independent t-test.  Results: In general, in the studied hospitals, the mean knowledge of supervisors and members of the Disaster Management Committee was 14.51 and 14.62, respectively, which was not significantly different (P = 0.486). In addition, the mean attitude of the supervisors and members of the Committee was 69.66 and 70.70, respectively, which was not significantly significant (P = 0.437). Regarding practice, the mean score of the practice of the supervisors and members was 9.62 and 12.0, respectively, which was significant (P = 0.045). Conclusion: Proper management of crises is achievable by organizing, coordination, and strengthening of all members of the crisis team.