Title

Perceived preparedness for disaster and emergency situations among nursing students in Saudi Arabia: The role of educational training and simulation

Authors

Howaida Shaker Saati^1,2,*, Rafa Obaid Allah Thawab Almutairi³, Atiaf Ali Dafer Alqahtani³, Joanna Yousef Saeed Almalki³, Rand Khalid Mohammed Alghaith³, Jawaher Hamdi Hashim Alharbi³ & Aryam Salman Muharb Almotairi³

Affiliation

¹Department of Nursing, College of Nursing - Jeddah Branch, King Saud bin Abdulaziz University for Health Sciences (KSAU-HS), Jeddah, Saudi Arabia; ²Department of Nursing, Nursing King Abdullah International Medical Research Center (KAIMRC)Box 9515, Jeddah 21423, Saudi Arabia; ³Department of Nursing, Nursing - Jeddah Branch, King Saud bin Abdulaziz University for Health Sciences (KSAU-HS), Jeddah, Saudi Arabia; *Corresponding author

Email

Howaida Shaker Saati - E-mail: saatih@ksau-hs.edu.sa

Rafa Obaid Allah Thawab Almutairi - E-mail: almutairi20647@ksau-hs.edu.sa

Atiaf Ali Dafer Alqahtani - E-mail: alqahtani20641@ksau-hs.edu.sa

Joanna Yousef Saeed Almalki - E-mail: almalki20527@ksau-hs.edu.sa

Rand Khalid Mohammed Alghaith - E-mail: alghaith20557@ksau-hs.edu.sa

Jawaher Hamdi Hashim Alharbi - E-mail: alharbi20528@ksau-hs.edu.sa

Aryam Salman Muharb Almotairi - E-mail: almotairi20504@ksau-hs.edu.sa

Article Type

Research Article

Date

Received July 1, 2026; Revised July 31, 2026; Accepted July 31, 2026, Published July 31, 2026

Abstract

Nurses play a critical role in disaster and emergency response, making preparedness training an essential component of undergraduate nursing education. Therefore, it is of interest to assess the perceived preparedness among 188 undergraduate nursing students in Levels 5-8 at the College of Nursing-Jeddah, King Saud bin Abdulaziz University for Health Sciences. Overall preparedness was moderate, with students reporting greater confidence in theoretical emergency knowledge (3.74 ± 0.81) than in managing trauma cases (3.48 ± 0.94). Students exposed to hospital-based emergency education, formal emergency courses and simulation-based disaster training reported greater preparedness than students without such training. Thus, data shows that integrating more simulation exercises, hands-on trauma training and disaster-response education into undergraduate nursing curricula.

Keywords

Nursing education, knowledge, disaster preparedness; emergency preparedness; nursing students; nursing education; simulation-based learning

Citation

Saati et al. Bioinformation 22(7): 4459-4463 (2026)

Edited by

P Kangueane

ISSN

0973-2063

Publisher

Biomedical Informatics

License

This is an Open Access article which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. This is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License.