Factors associated with clinicians’ response ability for public health emergencies: a cross-sectional study

Public health emergencies (PHEs), especially major infectious diseases, can lead to serious social disruptions and pose a grave threat to public health. Clinicians are one of the main forces in responding to PHE caused by infectious diseases. Accordingly, their emergency response ability (ERA) is crucial to whether such incidents can be quickly and effectively controlled. However, research related to ERA needs to be more sufficient. Therefore, this study aimed to identify and explore its influencing factors.

A total of 934 clinicians were selected to explore factors that influence the ERA level of clinicians using the multi-stage stratified convenience sampling method. Latent profile analysis (LPA) was employed to analyze the category of clinicians’ ERA for PHEs. Univariate analysis was conducted using the t-test and Chi-square test and multivariate analysis was performed using the binary logistic regression method.

The ERA score of clinicians was 3.83, which was at a moderate to upper level. LPA showed that all fitting indexes met the requirements when clinicians’ ERA were divided into weak and strong ERA group. Binary logistic regression revealed that ages (P < 0.001, OR = 2.29), whether to participate in the relevant training (P = 0.001, OR = 2.919) or rescue (P < 0.001, OR = 2.269) organized by the hospital for PHE caused by infectious diseases, whether your university or college has PHE related courses (P < 0.001, OR = 1.942), and professional practice satisfaction (P < 0.001, OR = 1.507) were significant predictors of ERA.

This study found that clinicians have poor performance in humanities and social sciences and public health knowledge and skills. Personal factors especially PHE related training or rescue and educational factors especially PHE related courses or practice, were significant predictors of ERA. Moreover, considering the importance of ERA, it is necessary to make a further explore additional risk factors of ERA.