- Author
- Bickman, L. | Herz, E. | Edelman, P. | Rivers, D.
- Title
- Evaluation of Planning and Training fo Fire Safety in Health Care Facilities. Phase 2. Final Report.
- Coporate
- Loyola Univ., Chicago, Il
- Sponsor
- National Bureau of Standards, Gaithersburg, MD
- Report
- NBS GCR 79-179, August 1979, 179 p.
- Distribution
- Available from National Technical Information Service
- Contract
- GRANT-C69015
- Keywords
- evacuation | fire doors | fire drills | fire extinguishers | fire safety | health care facilities | hospitals | human behavior | nursing homes | nursing staff | training
- Abstract
- Training for fire emergencies has always been assumed to appropriately affect knowledge and behavior. This assumption has not been systematically tested unitl now. Six nursing homes in Evanston, Illinois were matched and radomly assigned to experimental and comparison groups. A quasi-experimental pretest-posttest research design was employed to evaluate the impact of training on knowledge assessed with paper and pencil surveys) and behavior (drill observational assessments) of nursing home staff. Results indicated that training augmented knowledge in the experimental group, as expected. Various threats to the internal and external validity of the design, such as selection biases, sample attrition and pretesting by treatment interaction effects were ruled out, on a statistical basis, as plausible alternative explanations for the training effect. The results of the fire drill behavior analyses indicated a measurable impact of training on the overall behavior of the experimental group during the post-training fire drills. Several vent, or procedures, that should take place during a fire emergency were evaluated on the bais of a content-related scheme and a time-related scheme. Specific behaviors of staff members during the drills were discussed. This study demonstrated that a modest investment in training produced changes in both knowledge and behavior. However, the impact of the training was not as strong as anticipated. A more detailed study of the various types of training is strongly recommended.