Core Competencies in Disaster Management and Humanitarian Assistance: A Systematic Review.
Disaster response demands a large workforce covering diverse professional sectors. Throughout this article, we illustrate the results of a systematic review of peer-reviewed studies to identify existing competency sets for disaster management and humanitarian assistance that would serve as guidance for the development of a common disaster curriculum. A systematic review of English-language articles was performed on PubMed, Google Scholar, Scopus, ERIC, and Cochrane Library. Studies were included if reporting competency domains, abilities, knowledge, skills, or attitudes for professionals involved disaster relief or humanitarian assistance. Exclusion criteria included abstracts, citations, case studies, and studies not dealing with disasters or humanitarian assistance. Thirty-eight papers were analyzed. Target audience was defined in all articles. Five references (13%) reported cross-sectorial competencies. Most of the articles (81.6%) were specific to health care. Eighteen (47%) papers included competencies for at least 2 different disciplines and 18 (47%) for different professional groups. Nursing was the most widely represented cadre. Eighteen papers (47%) defined competency domains and 36 (94%) reported list of competencies. Nineteen articles (50%) adopted consensus-building to define competencies, and 12 (31%) included competencies adapted to different professional responsibility levels. This systematic review revealed that the largest number of papers were mainly focused on the health care sector and presented a lack of agreement on the terminology used for competency-based definition.
1CRIMEDIM,Università del Piemonte Orientale,Novara,Italy.
Alba
A
Ripoll Gallardo
1CRIMEDIM,Università del Piemonte Orientale,Novara,Italy.
Ahmadreza
A
Djalali
1CRIMEDIM,Università del Piemonte Orientale,Novara,Italy.
Marco
M
Foletti
1CRIMEDIM,Università del Piemonte Orientale,Novara,Italy.
Luca
L
Ragazzoni
1CRIMEDIM,Università del Piemonte Orientale,Novara,Italy.
Francesco
F
Della Corte
2URGENTA,Clinical Emergency Hospital,Bucharest,Romania.
Olivera
O
Lupescu
3Hanover Associates,Teddington,London,UK.
Chris
C
Arculeo
4NHCS,National Health Career School of Management,Hennigsdorf/Berlin,Germany.
Gotz
G
von Arnim
4NHCS,National Health Career School of Management,Hennigsdorf/Berlin,Germany.
Tom
T
Friedl
5Bonn International Center for Conversion,Bonn,University Clinic Bonn Department of Orthopedics and Trauma Surgery,Bonn,Germany.
Michael
M
Ashkenazi
5Bonn International Center for Conversion,Bonn,University Clinic Bonn Department of Orthopedics and Trauma Surgery,Bonn,Germany.
Philipp
P
Fisher
6CROUMSA,Croatian Urgent Medicine and Surgery Association,Slav. Brod,Croatia.
Boris
B
Hreckovski
7Prehospital and Disaster Medicine Centre,Sahlgrenska Academy,Gothenburg,Sweden.
Amir
A
Khorram-Manesh
8SBC,General & Teaching Hospital Celje, Medical Faculty Ljubljana,Slovenia.
Radko
R
Komadina
9German Aerospace Center (DLR),Oberpfaffenhofen,Germany.
Konstanze
K
Lechner
10Global Risk Forum GRF Davos,Davos,Switzerland.
Marc
M
Stal
11Clinical Emergency Hospital Bucharest,Romania.
Cristina
C
Patru
12Harvard Humanitarian Initiative,Cambridge,Massachusetts.
Frederick M
FM
Burkle
1CRIMEDIM,Università del Piemonte Orientale,Novara,Italy.
Pier Luigi
PL
Ingrassia
D003162:Competency-Based Education; D003479:Curriculum; D054597:Disaster Medicine / Q000193:education*; D004190:Disasters; D006282:Health Personnel / Q000193:education*; D006801:Humans; D016743:Mental Competency / Q000592:standards*; D011634:Public Health / Q000193:education*
competency-based education; disaster medicine education; humanitarian aid; professionalization