Issues affecting health professionals during and after catastrophic earthquakes in Van-Turkey

Objective: to assess physical and psycho-social problems faced by health professionals,and to analyse the ethical,legal and triage dimensions of disaster medical services. methods: the descriptive study was conducted from november 2011 to march 2012 and comprised health professionals from two hospitals of van,turkey a specific questionnaire was designed and interviews were conducted face to face. spss 13 was used for statistical analysis. results: of the 430 health professionals who had experienced one or more earthquakes and were part of the study,225(52.3%) were nurses and 205(47.7%) were doctors. there were 224(52%) women and 206(48%) men. besides,206(48) were below 31 years of age. overall,193(44.9%) participants experienced chaos,83(19.3%) panic and fear,and 129(30%) despair. only 20(4.7%) of them lived at home,while others lived in tents,containers,hospitals or cars during the emergency and continued to provide services despite social,economic and psychological problems. triage was preferred by 339(78.8%) of the respondents. conclusion: problems of health professionals were multi-dimensional and addressing them would make service delivery more effective. © 2016,pakistan medical association. all rights reserved.