The soft skills emergency management that matters at the hardest time: A phenomenology study of healthcare worker's experiences during Kelantan flood 2014

• Published in: International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction
• Main Author: Maznieda M.; Dalila R.; Rosnah S.; Rohaida I.; Rosmanajihah M.L.; Mizanurfakhri G.; Nurhanie M.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Elsevier Ltd 2022
• Online Access: https://www.scopus.com/inward/record.uri?eid=2-s2.0-85128286517&doi=10.1016%2fj.ijdrr.2022.102916&partnerID=40&md5=59b040cd4a5e8ab7103d7eb2767942d9

The monsoon flood was inevitable for Malaysia. Nevertheless, no one expected that it would be as severe as the Kelantan Flood 2014. Total collapse of communication disruption had made it difficult for centric top-down emergency management to reach out to the healthcare workers. Not only the public were severely affected yet even healthcare workers and their families felt the impact of that disaster. This study aims to explore the challenges faced by the healthcare workers and look into the management that really helped them survive this crisis. Nine (9) healthcare workers under the ministry of health working at hospitals and affected clinics narrated their experience and their transcriptions were coded by a panel of experts. It was found that the common challenge occurred when they had to deal with patients and emergency circumstances with total cut down of necessities like electric supply, food and most of these healthcare workers were burned out when there were limited human resources during that critical phase. They also had to deal with their own inner turmoil and psychological concerns while mending the needs of their patient and the other staff. Breakdowns of communication and handling emergency cases really put them to the test. In handling most of these challenges, all agreed on the importance of having a leader to coordinate and motivate them, to form a crisis management centre as the core place for communication to be synchronized and the importance of soft skills in getting help from locals and the Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs). This study has affirmed the importance for emergency management to focus on creating proactive response in empowering the bottom-up kind of management as a complement to the existing preparedness system. Hence there is no better way to do that than to pay heed on the soft skills aspect of an emergency management plan in the future. © 2022