Relationship Between Nurses’ Decision-Making Style and Their Disaster Response Competencies

Abstract

ABSTRACT Nurses are the first respondents to the critical situations and therefore must be able to effectively manage the critical situations using their competencies. Given that the decision-making style under the stressful critical situations is an important component of the care process in these situations, this study was conducted with the aim of determining the relationship between decision-making style and nurses’ disaster response competencies. This descriptive, analytical study was conducted in Shahr-e Kord city in 2018. A total of 300 nurses were selected from Ayatollah Kashani and Hajar hospitals by multistage sampling and from the Emergency Medical Services Center by the census method. Data were collected using the Disaster Nursing Competence Assessment and the decision-making style questionnaires and analyzed with SPSS 21 (IBM Corp, Armonk, NY). Most of the nurses used the intuitive decision-making style and the total score of disaster nursing competencies was 162.58 ± 22.70. Pearson’s correlation coefficient indicated that there was a positive relation between decision-making style and nurses’ disaster response competencies. The results show that decision-making style affects nurses’ competencies for disaster response and provides evidence for the development of educational policies in disaster nursing education.