Effectiveness of Advanced Fire Prevention and Emergency Response Training at Nursing Homes

In long-term care facilities, there are many residents aged 65+ who do not have the ability to seek shelter by themselves in the case of an emergency. Therefore, it is extremely important that nursing home staff be equipped with correct disaster prevention concepts, emergency survival responses, and hazard mitigation measures. The purpose of this study was to discuss the intervention effectiveness of different fire prevention and emergency response trainings at nursing homes, and the relationship and predictivity of awareness to self-efficacy. We used a quasi-experimental research method and recruited staff from two nursing homes through purposive sampling, using a two-team pre- and post-test design to collect results from 41 individuals in the experiment group and 40 individuals in the control group. The research tool was the “Nursing Home Fire Prevention and Emergency Response Awareness and Self-Efficacy Scale”, which was used to compare the effectiveness of advanced and general fire safety training. After receiving improved advanced fire safety training, the total score and the result of the experiment group in fire prevention and emergency response awareness and self-efficacy were both better than those of the control group who had received only general fire safety training (p < 0.001); fire prevention and emergency response awareness had a significant and positive correlation with self-efficacy (r = 0.601, p < 0.001), and awareness was a significant predictor variable of self-efficacy (β = 0.601, p < 0.001). This study finds that the key to improving learning effectiveness includes adding a fire science concept chapter when creating fire safety training material in order to strengthen basic awareness; fire safety training should comprehensively introduce all related duties and responsibilities for staff fire defense formation, thereby enabling mutual responsive support for the needs of the site. Moreover, becoming familiarized with the knowledge requires the appropriate frequency of training and enhancement of the staff’s awareness of fire prevention and emergency response, which is the most important key to learning effectiveness.