The impact of caring for children with mental retardation on families as perceived by mothers in Karachi, Pakistan.

OBJECTIVE: To assess how families perceive the positive and negative impacts of caring for a child with mental retardation. METHODS: The quantitative descriptive study was conducted from January to August 2007 and comprised 54 families attending a private day-care centre for children with special needs in Karachi, Pakistan. The Kansas Inventory of Parental Perceptions was used to assess mothers\u27 perceptions on the impact of caring for a child with mental retardation. Positive contributions, social comparisons with others, understanding of disability and perception of control were assessed. SPSS 16 was used for statistical analysis. RESULTS: Mothers reported positive contribution to family life as a result of caring for a child with mental retardation (Mean: 2.95 +/- 0.37). There was an acceptance of the situation and a trend towards upward favourable comparison with other families (Mean: 3.13 +/- 0.07). CONCLUSIONS: Contrary to earlier studies exploring the impact of caring for a child with disabilities having largely focused on negative contributions, the study highlights some positive contributions

A systematic approach of tracking and reporting medication errors at a tertiary care university hospital, Karachi, Pakistan

Khurshid Khowaja1, Rozmin Nizar1, Rashida J Merchant2, Jacqueline Dias3, Irma Bustamante-Gavino4, Amina Malik11Division of Nursing Services, 2Nursing Education Services, 3Diploma Programme, Nurudin Jivraj Professorship of Nursing, Aga Khan University, Karachi, Pakistan; 4The Ahmed Shivji Professorship of Nursing, The Aga Khan University School of Nursing, Karachi, PakistanIntroduction: Administering medication is one of the high risk areas for any health professional. It is a multidisciplinary process, which begins with the doctor’s prescription, followed by review and provision by a pharmacist, and ends with preparation and administration by a nurse. Several studies have highlighted a high medication incident rate at several healthcare institutions.Methods: Our study design was exploratory and evaluative and used methodological triangulation. Sample size was of two types. First, a convenient sample of 1000 medication dosages to estimate the medication error (95% CI). We took another sample from subjects involved in medication usage processes such as physicians, nurses, pharmacists, and patients. Two sets of instruments were designed via extensive literature review: a medication tracking error form and a focus group interview questionnaire.Results: Our study findings revealed 100% compliance with a computerized physician order entry (CPOE) system by physicians, nurses, and pharmacists. The main error rate was 5.5% and pharmacists contributed an higher error rate of 2.6% followed by nurses (1.1%) and physicians (1%). Major areas for improvement in error rates were identified: delay in medication delivery, lab results reviewed electronically before prescription, dispension, and administration.Keywords: medication error rate, associate error rate, physician, nurse, pharmacis

Women\u27s empowerment in Pakistan-definitions and enabling and disenabling factors: A secondary data analysis

Purpose: The purpose of the study was to explore Pakistani women’s definition of women’s empowerment, including its enabling and disenabling factors. Through understanding empowerment, interventions may be developed for women to be empowered. Design: Transcriptions of 35 interviews from a previous study were reanalyzed through secondary data analysis. Findings/Results: The themes of economic stability, social acceptability, educational achievement, and family harmony emerged for the concept of definition of empowerment. Themes for enabling factors were strength of personality and openness of mind. Disenabling factors had sociocultural influences, religious misinterpretations, and dominant ideology as themes. Discussion/Conclusions: Pakistani women hold on to their customs, traditions, and religion tenaciously. The views of empowerment leading to the themes were expressed as true for their lives

Predictors of academic performance in the first year of basic nursing diploma programme in Sindh, Pakistan

Identification of the students who are most likely to succeed in the nursing programmes has always remained an important goal of nursing schools and nurse educators. This study was conducted to identify predictors of academic performance of the students in the first year of basic nursing diploma programme in the province of Sindh, Pakistan. For this descriptive study, data was collected from Sindh Nurses Examination Board and all schools of nursing in province of Sindh. Multiple linear regression analysis method was used to develop regression model that identified predictor variable. Results indicated that academic factors including entry qualification, previous academic performance, and type of school are significantly related with the academic performance of the students. The study concluded that academic factors are better predictors of students\u27 academic performance than the non-academic factors

Breastfeeding and working full time: experiences of nurse mothers

M A T E R I A L -M E T H O D : A descriptive phenomenology was used to describe the experiences of nurse mothers in Karachi, Pakistan, working full time and breastfeeding. Twelve mothers constitute the participants who were selected purposively in six hospitals in Karachi. Unstructured interviews and observations were used to gather data guided by Colaizzi's data analysis method. R E S U L T S : Three themes emerged from the data: positive experiences, mediating health behavior, and negative experiences. The participants recommended setting up a day care center to address their breastfeeding problems. C O N C L U S I O N S : Breastfeeding rises to the mothers both positive and negative experiences mediated by mothers' health behaviors. Mothers working full time and breastfeeding find their whole experience rewarding as well as challenging. Although they know the importance and value of breastfeeding, due to their working circumstance they are unable to do this task, thus they made recommendations through this study to stress their negative experiences

Modifications of glycosphingolipid profile and synthesis in normal rat fibroblasts and in syngeneic neoplastic cells at different subculture stages

Glycosphingolipids are plasma membrane macromolecules involved in diversified recognition functions on the cell surface resulting in modulation of cell adhesion and differentiation. As the in vitro cellular system of the neoplastic cell line SGS/4A and syngeneic normal fibroblasts (FG) represents a useful tool for studies on molecular mechanisms regulating cell adhesion, neoplastic transformation and cellular ageing, we studied the changes of glycosphingolipid and of the enzymes involved in their metabolism in both cultured cells at different subculture stages. The FG subculture progression induces a drastic decrease of total glycosphingolipid content with consistent alterations in the molecular composition. In particular, a significant decrease of GM3, a slight increase of GD1a, the disappearance of ‘b’-series gangliosides and the drastic reduction of triosylceramides were observed. On the contrary, the increasing number of SGS/4A subcultures, characterized by a specific and different glycosphingolipid composition as compared with FG cells, does not cause modifications. Although glycosyltransferase activity levels quite well parallel the glycosphingolipid patterns and can account for the noted variations, the mRNA expression analysis of two glycosyltransferases suggests that the in vitro cell ageing of normal rat fibroblasts causes drastic changes in the glycosphingolipid profile through the regulation, at either the transcriptional or post-translational level, of some biosynthetic enzymes

SPME/GC-MS characterization of the volatile fraction of an Italian PDO sheep cheese to prevalent lypolitic ripening: the case of Fiore Sardo

A specifically aimed SPME/GC-MS method has been assessed in order to describe the volatile fraction of intense flavoring cheeses like Fiore Sardo PDO, a prevalent lipolytic ripening sheep cheese from Sardinia, Italy. A DVB/ CAR/PDMS 50/30 μm fiber and a 3-min exposure time showed to be the best compromise between the possibility to extract compounds with a wide range of polarity and molecular mass and the need to avoid competition and displacement effects among analytes. The volatile compound profile of Fiore Sardo PDO sheep cheese was largely characterized by carboxylic acids (about 68% of the total area of recognized peaks), whereas esters (14%), ketones (9%), and alcohols (8%) represented other abundant classes of low molecular weight species. A number of low-smelling thres- hold trace compounds were also identified as likely contributors of aroma of the Fiore Sardo PDO cheese