PURPOSE: Healthcare professionals including nurses have a crucial role in reducing the impact of severe crises, also emergency nurses are the majority of healthcare professionals who directly work with catastrophe victims. Thus, they should be prepared well to cope with such situations and they need to have appropriate knowledge, skills, and competencies to manage their tasks during disasters. Thus, this study aimed to assess the effect of a training program for disaster management on knowledge, skills, and personal preparedness among emergency nurses in Palestine. METHODS: A one-group pretest-post-test design was used. The data were collected from 64 emergency nurses from governmental and non-governmental hospitals in Palestine by distributing the Disaster Preparedness Evaluation Tool before and after the educational program. Nursing Triage Observation Checklist (NTOC) was used to assess the nurses' skills in the emergency departments. RESULTS: The findings demonstrated that emergency nurses' knowledge, skills, and personal readiness for disaster preparedness before the training program were moderate. There were significant increases in nurses' knowledge after a training program (pre [M = 3.83, SD = 0.82]
post [M = 5.15, SD = 0.29]), skills (pre [M = 3.70, SD = 0.87]
post [M = 5.04, SD = 0.27]), and personal preparedness (pre [M = 3.85, SD = 0.83]
post [M = 5.12, SD = 0.27]). After the training program, nurses demonstrated strong knowledge, skills, and personal preparedness. There were significant differences in nurses' knowledge, skills, and personal preparedness before and after the disaster training program (t = -13.326
p <
0.001
t = -12.539
p <
0.001, t = -12.256
p <
0.001, respectively). The observation of nurses' skills pre-intervention indicated that 51 (79.6 %) nurses of the participants had good skills in triage and observation of nurses' skills one-month post-intervention program indicated that all nurses (100 %) showed good skills in triage. CONCLUSIONS: The results proved the effectiveness of a disaster training program in improving emergency nurses' knowledge, skills, and personal preparedness for disaster management. Therefore, policymakers and healthcare professionals must ensure that disaster preparedness training for emergency nurses is continuously updated to incorporate new developments in the field. This will equip nurses to respond effectively, mitigate risks, and deliver high-quality care during disasters.