Factors Influencing Hospital Emergency Evacuation during Fire: A Systematic Literature Review

BACKGROUND: Although the hospital is known as a safe place for treating patients, due to various reasons, it is prone to several internal hazards, including fire. This study aimed to identify the factors affecting hospital emergency evacuation during fire. METHODS: This was a systematic review conducted according to the PRISMA guideline. Thematic Content analysis was utilized to analyze and extract results. We found the studies investigating the factors affecting hospital emergency evacuation during fire through a comprehensive search in various data resources (MEDLINE, Web of Science, Google Scholar, Embase, ProQuest, Scopus, IRANMEDEX, SID, ISC, and Magiran) and other sources from the beginning of January 2000 to the end of December 2019. Thematic Content analysis was also employed to analyze. RESULTS: At first and based on the initial search, 4484 studies were identified, and 48 articles were finally included in the study. Based on the results; five main themes along with 10 sub-themes were identified. The themes included the incident's characteristics, response measures, hospital preparedness, hospital residents, and hospital building, and the sub-themes were emergency evacuation features, fire characteristics, command, operation, patients' and staff's characteristics, planning, logistics, and structure and design hospital. CONCLUSIONS: Based on the results of the present study, hospital preparedness as one of the most important factors can reduce the hospital evacuation time. Therefore, hospitals can ensure a timely and more effective response in emergency evacuation during fire by improving their preparedness.