Paper Title
Assessing The Healthcare Organizations Disaster Preparedness Through Drills

Abstract
Hospitals are the first institutions to be affected after a disaster and they need to be well prepared to handle such unusual workloads. The present study was aimed to assess the hospital preparedness through mock drills using a questionnaire based upon a �Tool for Evaluating Core Elements of Hospital Disaster Drills� prepared by Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore. These included pre-drill and drill questionnaire based on functioning of various zones i.e. Incident Command zone, Restriction Zone, Triage Zone and Treatment Zone. In a total six drills were conducted. In the first drill, there was no designated Control room, while 2nd drill onwards it was established in MS Office. The time taken by in-charge to take command and to activate the disaster plan was initially 20-30 minutes, but later it improved to <10 minutes. Restriction Zone was activated as soon as information was confirmed. In-charge security deployed appropriate number of security personals. Ambulances reported till restriction zone. Victims were received in restriction zone and tagging was done. The staff in restriction zone included Emergency medical officer, trolley men, May I Help You personals and security guards. Triage area was commanded by faculty members. The victims from this area were shifted to treatment zone, operation theatre with proper and clearly visible triage labelling. Triage zone functioned efficiently because of sufficient supply of medicines and equipments for management of injured. The diseased were shifted to mortuary. The Treatment zone is the area where victims are actually treated according to their triage labels and it was inside surgery and orthopaedics emergencies itself. To conclude, all these drills were conducted well and institute is well equipped with disaster stock and is capable to manage the disaster situations efficiently. Still, there is need to raise awareness, conduct regular training programmes and the institute�s disaster management policy to increase the efficiency and capability of health care workers.