American Research Journal of Nursing

 The role of nurses on disasters has expanded simply caring for the sick and injured and ability to react to during the disaster. Emergency nurse plays a critical role in all disaster phases starting from the mitigation phase and continue throughout the disaster cycle, preparedness’ response and recovery. Nurses are the frontline workers to provide effective care during disaster and crisis situation. Nurses need to have adequate knowledge and skills for effective approach to respond to the critical situation. Objectives: To assess level of knowledge on disaster readiness among emergency nurses and to assess the role of the emergency Nurses on disaster response and to associated the demographic variables with level of readiness among the emergency nurses. Material and Method: The research design adopted for this study was non-experimental explorative design. The study was conducted at selected hospitals in najran with 200 sample size. The samples that met the inclusion criteria were selected by using non probability purposive sampling technique. The tool used for the data collection was demographic variable, Knowledge questionnaire on disaster preparedness, questionnaire on emergency nurses role in disaster response and Emergency Preparedness Information Questionnaire (EPIQ). Result: Majority of the nurses delivered the acceptable knowledge on readiness for disaster response. Most of the emergency nurses had moderate knowledge 55% and 33% had adequate knowledge on disaster preparedness. Conclusion: The emergency nurses had acceptable level of knowledge on disaster preparedness and neutral familiarity in emergency preparedness. The emergency nurses aware about their leading role and responsibility during disaster response and provides effective nursing care for the client who was suffering with trauma / injury during the disaster