Background: Disasters have a potential of producing mass casualties thereby straining the health care systems. This means that hospitals need to be prepared for an unusual increase in workload, hence the importance of hospital disaster preparedness. Aim: The aim of the study to evaluate the effect of a guidance booklet on knowledge and attitude about disaster preparedness among nurses. Methods: Research design: A quasi experimental research design with pre-test post-test time series and follow up assessment. Setting: the study was conducted at University Hospital, in Menoufia Governorate, Egypt. Subjects: The convenience sample, it include all nursing managers (nursing directors and nursing supervisors n = 12), all head nurses (n = 48) and staff nurses (n = 280), available at the time of the study. They have all fulfilled the eligibility criterion of a working experience of not less than one year of the study settings. Tools of data collection: Two tools were used for data collection. Tool one: consists of three parts; part (a) to collect socio-demographics data and part (b) aimed to collect nurses' knowledge about general disaster, classification and disaster preparedness and part (c) aimed to assess the nurses' awareness by hospital disasters on external or internal level. Tool two: Attitudes of nurses towards disaster management plan. Results: The results of this study showed that, majority of nurses scored weak estimation in knowledge, awareness and attitudes level at pre-test measurement. Conversely, lowest percentages had moderate level, and good level of knowledge related to general disaster, while only 12.6% of nurses were satisfactory awareness about hospital disaster preparedness and 37.5% had positive attitude towards disaster management. There was statistically-significant (p < .001). Conclusions: It was concluded that, guidance booklet was successful in achieving significant improvement in nurses' knowledge regarding disaster preparedness which was reflected in improvement and changing their attitude towards disaster. Recommendation: Continued nursing education should be open to all hospital staff according to their needs to increase their awareness about disaster preparedness.

Background and objective: Organizational readiness refers to organizational members' change commitment and change efficacy to implement organizational change and confidence in their accumulative abilities to do so. The aim of the study was to assess the nurse managers' behavior in managing change, and the level of the organizational change readiness at selected hospitals at Menofia Governorate. Methods: Design: A descriptive cross-sectional design was used. Setting: The study was conducted at two hospitals, namely University Hospital and Shebin El-Kom Teaching Hospital, in Menofia Governorate, Egypt. Subjects: It consisted of two groups, Group 1: A convenience sample of 136 staff nurses (67 staff nurses from Menofia University Hospital, and 69 from Shebin El-Kom Teaching Hospital), Group 2: All nurse manager available on the time of the study (31 from Menofia University Hospitals, and 30 from Shebin El-Kom Teaching Hospital). Tools: a) Tool one: Change management process Questionnaire, b) Tool two: Change Readiness Assessment Scale. Results: More than half of the nurse managers reported that they have a good behavior in managing change in the organization, while the staff nurses reported that their managers had a bad behavior during the change process. Organizational readiness level was higher in University hospitals than in Teaching hospital as perceived by the study subjects. Conclusions: The nurse managers and staff nurses reported that the organization had a bad readiness level to change. Additionally there was a positive correlation between organizational readiness and manager behavior in managing change. Recommendations: Organization should have a readiness for change to support the change process by possessing the right resources and conditions, a clear insights and goals for the intended change and have the inventiveness, behavior to participate with the change and develop work. Also, agents of change chiefs and management must need to drive a strong reaction for change from the stakeholders that leads to highest performance improvement.