T . Ohba et al .: Radioprotection 2024 , 59 ( 2 ), 88 – 94 91
Fig . 1 . The number of years elapsed since designation as an NDRH and the availability of manuals on nuclear disasters among each facility . NDRH : Nuclear Disaster Related Hospitals .
disaster manuals refers to the availability of manuals that explain how to use facilities , how to prepare to provide medical care to contaminated individuals , and what roles staff members have in nuclear disaster medicine .
Four items in the questionnaire ( see Supplementary Tab . 1 ) addressed the availability of permanent facilities : 1 ) a dedicated emergency room for contaminated patients (‘ Yes ’ or ‘ No ’; ‘ Yes ’ if a room was permanently dedicated to receiving contaminated injured patients in a nuclear disaster and ‘ No ’ if such a room was only temporarily available ); 2 ) a dedicated indoor space for the examination of body surface contamination (‘ Yes ’ or ‘ No ’; ‘ Yes ’ if a facility existed that could prevent the spread of radioactive materials that contributed to body surface contamination and ‘ No ’ if such a facility was unavailable ); 3 ) storage facilities for radioactive waste (‘ Yes ’ or ‘ No ’ ; ‘ Yes ’ if a facility permanently existed that could store waste containing radioactive material contamination and ‘ No ’ if such a facility was only temporarily available ); and 4 ) a water storage tank for storing radioactively contaminated water (‘ Yes ’ or ‘ No ’; ‘ Yes ’ if a facility permanently existed for a water storage tank and ‘ No ’ if such a facility was only temporarily available ).
Twenty-six facilities responded to the study questionnaire . The valid response rate for the study was 49.1 %. The following methods were used to analyse the responses to the questionnaire items : 1 ) analysis of the existence of permanent hardware facilities in NDRHs with the number of years elapsed since designation as an NDRH and the availability of manuals on nuclear disaster ; 2 ) comparison across the four items of the trends in the existence of permanent hardware facilities in a 2 2 matrix about relationship between the years elapsed since designation as an NDRH and the availability of manuals on nuclear disaster . The analyses were 2 2 two-tailed Fisher ’ s exact tests using the statistical analysis software JMP14.3 ( JMP Statistical Discovery LLC , Cary , NC , USA ). The significance level for the statistical analyses was set at 5 %.
3 Results
Table 1 shows that facilities that had been designated as an NDRH for over four years were significantly more likely to have over 50 total staff ( p = 0.015 ) who had attended nuclear disaster medicine training . Moreover , permanent hardware facilities that had been designated as an NDRH for over four years had significantly fewer dedicated emergency rooms for contaminated patients ( p = 0.048 using the one-tailed test ), dedicated indoor spaces for body surface contamination examination ( p = 0.036 ) and storage facilities for radioactive waste ( p = 0.016 ) than facilities that had been designated as an NDRH for less than four years . Conversely , the availability of manuals on nuclear disasters was significantly more likely when two items specific to permanent facilities ( dedicated indoor space for body surface contamination examination [ p = 0.038 ] and storage facilities for radioactively contaminated water [ p = 0.038 ]) than if these items were temporarily available ( Tab . 1 ). No association was observed between the years elapsed since designation as an NDRH and the availability of manuals on nuclear disasters .
Figure 1 shows the matrix of the years that had elapsed since designation as an NDRH and the availability of manuals on nuclear disasters for the four items specific to the existence