{"doi":"10.1017/dmp.2025.10208","title":"Emergency Health Care Workers’ Preparedness and Willingness to Respond to a Dirty Bomb-related Disaster in Pakistan","abstract":"OBJECTIVE: Our study examined the association between willingness-to-respond (WTR) and behavioral factors, demographics, and work-related characteristics among emergency department healthcare workers (HCWs) toward a radiological dispersal device (RDD) (\"dirty bomb\") blast scenario in Pakistan. METHODS: A cross-sectional survey was conducted in August to September 2022 among emergency department HCWs from 2 hospitals in Karachi, Pakistan. Nonprobability purposive sampling was used to recruit participants. Multivariate logistic regression analyses were performed to examine the association between WTR and key attitudes/beliefs, including perceived norms, preparedness, and safety, as well as the EPPM variables. RESULTS: Among behavioral factors, perceived likelihood that colleagues will report to work duty, perceived importance of one's role, and psychological preparedness showed particularly significant associations with WTR; 53.6% of participants indicated low perceived threat, while 46.43% showed high perceived threat, toward an RDD disaster scenario. CONCLUSION: Our findings point to the need to improve WTR toward an RDD event by shifting behavioral factors among HCWs through efficacy-focused training; enhancing WTR through such training strategies is imperative beyond mere delivery of information. Changing norms around response, along with institutional support, may further boost WTR during RDD emergencies.","journal":"Disaster Medicine and Public Health Preparedness","year":2025,"id":547250,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":1,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.951,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2025-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":1439694,"name":"Ume-e-Aimen Chhipa","orcid":"0000-0001-5974-8855","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1124815,"name":"Nargis Asad","orcid":null,"position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":918844,"name":"Bee‐Ah Kang","orcid":"0000-0002-1124-2481","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":816887,"name":"Daniel J. Barnett","orcid":"0000-0003-1382-6197","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1124344,"name":"Amber Mehmood","orcid":"0000-0002-8417-1282","position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1341153,"name":"Simran Motwani","orcid":"0000-0002-5726-5267","position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1440095,"name":"Jawed Akbar Dars","orcid":null,"position":7,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":430478,"name":"Junaid Razzak","orcid":"0000-0003-0735-9094","position":8,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":522674,"name":"Badar Afzal","orcid":null,"position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":31,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-19T02:53:41.314800Z","pmid":"41020399","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}