Hospital Patient Safety Culture in Developing Countries: A Comparative Study in Ilam City, Iran.

Aims: In this study, patient safety culture was assessed in four educational hospitals in Ilam city, Iran. Study Design and Setting: A cross-sectional study was carried out in four educational hospitals (Imam Khomeini, Mustafa Khomeini, Taleghani and Kowsar hospitals) in Ilam city (Iran). Study Duration: The study was conducted over 2014. Methods: The data collection was conducted via the Iranian version of Hospital Survey on Patient Safety Culture (HSOPSC) questionnaire. The questionnaire contains 42 items that evaluates 12 dimensions of patient safety culture. Results: The results showed that 47% of the participants had 1- 5 years of work experience and 71.1% of them worked more than 40 hours per week in hospital. The mean positive answers score of the safety culture in this study was obtained 40% that was much lower than the benchmark (64%). The highest and lowest percentages of the positive answer were attributed to teamwork within units (70%) and non-punitive response to error (11%), respectively. Conclusion: In order to increase the patient safety culture in the hospitals, the number of professional staff should be increased and a practical plan about the patient safety culture should be provided. Moreover, the hospitals management should support the staff to report errors without fear of the punishment

Removal of methylene blue from aqueous solutions using raw and modified rice husk

ABSTRACT, one of the most important environmental pollutants is dye containing wastewaters. Methylene blue (MB) is a cationic dye that has carcinogenic and mutagenic effects on human. This study was investigated to remove methylene blue dye from aqueous solutions by raw and modified rice husk (Raw-RH and Modified-RH). The influence of various parameters including pH, contact time, adsorbent dose and initial dye concentration was studied on the dye removal efficiencyin a batch system. The results showed that the equilibrium was obtained at the contact time of 90 min and the maximum dye removal was also occurred at pH 10 for both the Raw-RH and Modified-RH adsorbents. The experimental data were analyzed by the Langmuir and Freundlich isotherm models. The findings showed that the data were best fitted with the Freundlich isotherm. The obtained data for MB adsorption onto the Raw-RH and Modified-RH were also fitted via the pseudo-first order and pseudo-second order kinetic models. The correlation coefficients values (R2 ) showed that the adsorption kinetic described well by the pseudo-second order model. The results of this study indicated that rice husk can be used as an effective and low-cost adsorbent for the removal of methylene blue from aqueous solutions

Health-related Microbial Quality of Drinking Water in Kangavar, Western Iran

Evaluation of the microbial quality of drinking water can prevent the water-borne diseases outbreak that is one of the most important challenges in the world. Therefore, the aim of this study was to assess the seasonal variation of water-borne diseases prevalence associated with the microbial quality of drinking water and the comparison between rural and urban areas in Kangavar city, west of Iran. To accomplish this study, the results of the microbial quality of drinking water and cases of simple diarrhea, dysentery, typhoid and hepatitis A were received from all rural and urban health centers of the city during five years (2006-2010). To determine the relationship between diseases and microbial quality of water, Correlation instruction and Pearson correlation coefficient were used. The results showed that except hepatitis A, the incidence of all diseases in different areas (urban or rural) and seasons had significant relationship with microbial contamination of drinking water (P-value<0.05). The stronger relationship was observed in rural areas than in urban areas (except simple diarrhea) and in warm seasons than in cold seasons. With respect to the impact of the microbial quality of water on the incidence of dysentery and typhoid diseases, keeping up the quality of drinking water in places and times with high sensitivity (rural areas and warm seasons) should be considered strongly

Equilibrium and Kinetic study of Ibuprofen Removal from Aqueous Solutions Using Modified Carbon Sesame Straw

Ibuprofen is one of the most widely used drugs in the world, which affects the health of living organisms by causing pollution in water sources. Therefore, this study was conducted with the aim of determining the effectiveness of modified carbon of straw and sesame stubble in removing ibuprofen from aqueous solutions. For this purpose, ammonium chloride, zinc chloride, and phosphoric acid were used to optimize the adsorbent. Also, the changes in the absorbent surface and its characteristics were studied using a scanning electron microscope (SEM) and infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) technique. After determining the optimal conditions of pH variables, contact time, temperature, and adsorbent dose, the surface adsorption process was investigated under three Langmuir, Freundlich, and Dubinin-Radoshkevich models. On the other hand, first-order and pseudo-second-order kinetic models were used to process the adsorption data. The results showed that the surface adsorption process followed the Freundlich isotherm model pseudo-second-order kinetics. pH, contact time, initial concentration of ibuprofen, and optimal adsorbent dose were 3, 120 min, 50 mg/l, and 0.10 g/l respectively at 25°C. The results of this study showed that agricultural residues such as straw and sesame stubble can be used as effective and cost-effective adsorbents to remove the remaining pharmaceutical compounds from aqueous solutions

Evaluation of Removal Efficiency of Fluoride from Aqueous Solutions Using Modified Carbon of Oak Fruit: Isotherm and Kinetic Studies

Fluoride is one of the developed compounds that can enter water resources in different ways. The World Health Organization has recommended its maximum permissible concentration in drinking water of 1.5 mg/l so that its concentration exceeding the permissible limit can be harmful to the health of living organisms and ecosystems. The aim of this study was to determine the efficiency of activated carbon modified by the thermo-chemical method from oak fruit in fluoride removal. This research was conducted in a discontinuous system on a laboratory scale, and for this purpose, the effect of effective parameters such as time, pH, concentration, adsorbent dose, and other factors was investigated. The results of the experiments showed that the maximum amount of removal takes place during 90 min, pH=3, adsorbent dose of 0.1 g/l, and pollutant concentration of 50 mg/l. The results of the synthetic models showed that the Freundlich model with the coefficient of determination (R2=0.863) is a better model than the Langmuir model with the coefficient of determination (R2=0.736) to describe the synthetic behavior of the absorber. Until now, most absorption methods have been performed to remove the pollutant concentration of 30 mg/l. In the current study, with the input pollutant concentration of 50 mg/l, it can be stated that the activated carbon modified from the oak fruit is a cheap, efficient, and effective adsorbent. It is considered available to remove fluoride from aqueous solutions

The Impact of Hearing Protection Devices (HPDs) on Blood Pressure in Workers Exposed to Noise: A Cross-sectional Study in a Textile Industry

Many studies have reported that exposure to workplace noise leads to increase in blood pressure. The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of hearing protection devices (HPDs) including ear plug and ear muff on the systolic and diastolic blood pressures of workers exposed to workplace noise in a textile industry. A total of 120 male workers that exposed to 95 dB noise were investigated in this study. The systolic and diastolic blood pressures of the workers were measured for three situations of earplug, earmuff and earplug along earmuff applications. Data analyses were conducted through SPSS software (version 20) and statistical tests of ANOVA and Independent Sample Tests. The comparison of mean blood pressure in three situations showed that using ear muff had a significant effect on the systolic and diastolic blood pressures in the workers. Furthermore, the use of ear plug only had an effect on the systolic blood pressure. But, the application of ear muff caused to decrease in the systolic and diastolic blood pressures only in the third stage of the study. With regard to the results in this study, in order to control the blood pressure changes of the workers, it is recommended to use ear muff in the textile industry

Quantification of Health Impacts Related to PM10 and O3 Pollutants in Karaj City

Although the numbers of death related to air pollution appear to be low, the incidence of related disease to air pollution would be too high that is because of exposure of the large population to air pollutants and also the existence of certain sensitive groups. The aim of this study was to quantification health impacts of two pollutants PM10 and O3 in Karaj city during 2012- 2013. In this study, the air quality data were obtained from Karaj Department of Environment Protection. Quantification the health impacts of air pollutants were assessed using AirQ2.2.3 model which is a proposed method for assessing the health impact of air pollutants by World Health Organization. The annual, warm, and cold average concentrations of PM10 were 77.48, 87.86, and 62µg/m3, respectively. O3 average concentration in the warm semester was 63.5µg/m3 and it is more than a cold season which was 60µg/m3. Total mortality rate related to PM10 and O3 were assessed 282 and 164, respectively, which are 3.9 and 1.53 percent of all deaths, respectively. The Average cases of obstructive lung disease related to O3 were 58 people and average cases of hospitalization due to cardiovascular diseases related to PM10 were 492 people. This study was the first attempt to reveal the health outcome of air pollutants on a human in Karaj as one of the crowded city of Iran. Totally we found that the average concentration of 8-hours O3 and 24-hours PM10 were higher than the national standard of Iran and WHO guideline

Application of Glycyrrhiza glabra

The aim of this paper is to investigate the removal of toluene from gaseous solution through Glycyrrhiza glabra root (GGR) as a waste material. The batch adsorption experiments were conducted at various conditions including contact time, adsorbate concentration, humidity, and temperature. The adsorption capacity was increased by raising the sorbent humidity up to 50 percent. The adsorption of toluene was also increased over contact time by 12 h when the sorbent was saturated. The pseudo-second-order kinetic model and Freundlich model fitted the adsorption data better than other kinetic and isotherm models, respectively. The Dubinin-Radushkevich (D-R) isotherm also showed that the sorption by GGR was physical in nature. The results of the thermodynamic analysis illustrated that the adsorption process is exothermic. GGR as a novel adsorbent has not previously been used for the adsorption of pollutants

Simultaneous monitoring of SARS-CoV-2, bacteria, and fungi in indoor air of hospital: a study on Hajar Hospital in Shahrekord, Iran

The novel SARS-CoV-2 outbreak was declared as pandemic by the World Health Organization (WHO) on March 11, 2020. Understanding the airborne route of SARS-CoV-2 transmission is essential for infection prevention and control. In this study, a total of 107 indoor air samples (45 SARS-CoV-2, 62 bacteria, and fungi) were collected from different wards of the Hajar Hospital in Shahrekord, Iran. Simultaneously, bacterial and fungal samples were also collected from the ambient air of hospital yard. Overall, 6 positive air samples were detected in the infectious 1 and infectious 2 wards, intensive care unit (ICU), computed tomography (CT) scan, respiratory patients' clinic, and personal protective equipment (PPE) room. Also, airborne bacteria and fungi were simultaneously detected in the various wards of the hospital with concentrations ranging from 14 to 106 CFU m(-3) and 18 to 141 CFU m(-3), respectively. The highest mean concentrations of bacteria and fungi were observed in respiratory patients' clinics and ICU wards, respectively. Significant correlation (p < 0.05) was found between airborne bacterial concentration and the presence of SARS-CoV-2, while no significant correlation was found between fungi concentration and the virus presence. This study provided an additional evidence about the presence of SARS-CoV-2 in the indoor air of a hospital that admitted COVID-19 patients. Moreover, it was revealed that the monitoring of microbial quality of indoor air in such hospitals is very important, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, for controlling the nosocomial infections