investigating safety standards and performance of emergency power diesel generators in hospitals of tabriz, iran

Background: power outage risk is one of the serious risks that could be eliminated by supplying electricity through the emergency power system installed in a hospital, such as diesel generators and uninterruptible power supplies (upss).objectives: the present study aimed to investigate the observance of safety and maintenance standards of emergency power diesel generators in the hospitals of tabriz.methods: this descriptive-analytical research was cross-sectionally performed in 18 hospitals of tabriz in 2014. the data collection tools included a questionnaire and a checklist prepared according to the national standards and consisted of 87 questions in 15 categories. data were analyzed using spss version 19.results: the average rates of observance of safety and maintenance standards of diesel generators in 111-question standards and 87-question standards were equal to 61.4 and 52.8%, respectively. regarding the observance of the 19 standards, ventilation and daily visits standards with 28.94 and 96.24, respectively, had the lowest and highest degrees of observance in hospitals. there was a significant direct association between observing the standards defined for diesel generators with the number of hospital beds (p = 0.01) and the total capacity of emergency power generation by generators (p = 0.05).conclusions: the results of the present study indicate a low level of safety and maintenance for the emergency power systems of hospitals. these scores are not considered favorable for a system called emergency, and if the necessary interventions are not made in this regard, in the event of natural disasters and human errors, hospitals will face numerous problems.