Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

Language

English

Publication Date

8-1-2024

Journal

Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine

DOI

10.1097/JOM.0000000000003140

PMID

38748398

PMCID

PMC11300142

PubMedCentral® Posted Date

8-1-2025

PubMedCentral® Full Text Version

Author MSS

Abstract

OBJECTIVE: Much of disaster mental health research uses quantitative methods, focusing on numerical prevalence, services, and outcomes.

METHODS: Qualitative methods can provide more detailed, rich, and spontaneous insights into personal disaster experiences, yielding important insights beyond deductive methods. This large-scale qualitative narrative study examined experiences of 181 Oklahoma City bombing rescue/recovery workers.

RESULTS: Thematic narrative content of the bombing experience arose from personal accounts of the bomb blast by rescue/recovery workers proceeding chronologically from initial awareness and deployment to harrowing onsite search and rescue/recovery missions to the aftermath with reflections on the bombing.

CONCLUSIONS: Beyond disaster recovery/rescue worker stories published in popular media, little other substantive published knowledge on this topic is available, and therefore this research study provides a wealth of new in-depth information that can provide guidance for policy and practice for disaster response.

Keywords

Humans, Oklahoma, Bombs, Qualitative Research, Terrorism, Male, Female, Adult, Rescue Work, Middle Aged, Emergency Responders, Narration

Published Open-Access

yes

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