A multi-center study on the attitudes of Malaysian emergency health care staff towards allowing family presence during resuscitation of adult patients

BACKGROUND The practice of allowing family members to witness on-going active resuscitation has been gaining ground in many developed countries since it was first introduced in the early 1990s. In many Asian countries, the acceptability of this practice has not been well studied. AIM We conducted a multi-center questionnaire study to determine the attitudes of health care professionals in Malaysia towards family presence to witness ongoing medical procedures during resuscitation. METHODS Using a bilingual questionnaire (in Malay and English language), we asked our respondents about their attitudes towards allowing family presence (FP) as well as their actual experience of requests from families to be allowed to witness resuscitations. Multiple logistic regression was used to analyze the association between the many variables and a positive attitude towards FP. RESULTS Out of 300 health care professionals who received forms, 270 responded (a 90% response rate). Generally only 15.8% of our respondents agreed to allow relatives to witness resuscitations, although more than twice the number (38.5%) agreed that relatives do have a right to be around during resuscitation. Health care providers are significantly more likely to allow FP if the procedures are perceived as likely to be successful (e.g., intravenous cannulation and blood taking as compared to chest tube insertion). Doctors were more than twice as likely as paramedics to agree to FP (p-value = 0.002). This is probably due to the Malaysian work culture in our health care systems in which paramedics usually adopt a 'follow-the-leader' attitude in their daily practice. CONCLUSION The concept of allowing FP is not well accepted among our Malaysian health care providers

Mapping music education in Australia

Music education research in Australia has grown almost exponentially over the past 25 years. Particularly in the area of doctoral research studies, there has been a substantial increase in the number of theses completed from two in 1977 to 72 in 2002. In addition, there have been increases in professional research undertaken by university academics, in the number of nationally competitive research grants being awarded by the Australian Research Council and other research funding agencies, and in commissioned research studies. This article reviews the various types of music education research being undertaken in Australia and also discusses the dissemination of the findings of research through articles in national and international scholarly journals and papers presented at local and international conferences. One of the conclusions drawn is that Australian music education has &lsquo;come of age&rsquo; in terms of both the quantity and the quality of its national research profile. <br /