The survey on Near Field Communication

PubMed ID: 26057043Near Field Communication (NFC) is an emerging short-range wireless communication technology that offers great and varied promise in services such as payment, ticketing, gaming, crowd sourcing, voting, navigation, and many others. NFC technology enables the integration of services from a wide range of applications into one single smartphone. NFC technology has emerged recently, and consequently not much academic data are available yet, although the number of academic research studies carried out in the past two years has already surpassed the total number of the prior works combined. This paper presents the concept of NFC technology in a holistic approach from different perspectives, including hardware improvement and optimization, communication essentials and standards, applications, secure elements, privacy and security, usability analysis, and ecosystem and business issues. Further research opportunities in terms of the academic and business points of view are also explored and discussed at the end of each section. This comprehensive survey will be a valuable guide for researchers and academicians, as well as for business in the NFC technology and ecosystem.Publisher's Versio

Determining medication prescription and administration errors in a paediatric oncology ward in Gauteng

Medication errors in paediatric patients are a complex health problem occurring worldwide. Previous work has researched the incorporation of electronic methods in prescribing and administering medication, but little is known about medication errors in hospitalised children in South Africa, where all prescription and administration of medication is done manually. A quantitative, observational, cross-sectional design was used to conduct this study. The setting for the study was a paediatric oncology ward in a central hospital in Gauteng, South Africa. A convenient sampling method was used, and data was collected using pre-determined structured data sheets. A total of 432 prescribed medications written on prescription charts in the paediatric oncology ward were analysed and 1064 medication administrations were directly observed. This data was used to determine the types, frequencies and contributing factors to prescription and medication administration errors. During prescription chart analysis, a total error rate of 56% was discovered in the general writing and labelling of prescriptions while a significant number (78%) of all prescriptions were incomplete. Relating to the error type, it was found that 119 of 432 prescribed medications had a prescription error with wrong dose errors being the most prevalent. Contributing factors which increase the incidence of prescription errors were scheduled medications, bed occupancy, day of the week, incomplete prescriptions and illegible writing. In the direct observation of medication administration, a significant error rate of 93% was found. Documentation errors comprised 63%, making this type of error the most prevalent. Of 1,064 medication administrations observed, 1 in 10 medications were omitted. When considering the “rights of medication” (right patient, medication, dose, route, time), dose errors were the most frequently observed. Contributing factors which increased the incidence of medication administration errors were the type of medication, scheduled medications, route of administration, rank of the administrator, bed occupancy, and the day of the week on which the administration took place. The findings indicate that supervision and training in both prescription and medication administration would contribute to achieving this goal.Dissertation (MCur)--University of Pretoria, 2019.Nursing ScienceMCurUnrestricte