Problems And Challenges Of Attendance In Medical Students

Completing essential training in Medicine, Surgery, Gynecology, and Pediatrics   during the final year of Medical College is crucial for individuals aspiring to become doctors. Medical training in Large Group Interactive Sessions and Clinical Clerkships is designed to equip students with knowledge, skills, and experience necessary to practice medicine safely and effectively. Failure to complete essential teaching and training in Medicine, Surgery, Gynecology, and Pediatrics can leave significant gaps in a doctor to be student's education and preparation for medical practice.1 Without this training, such person will lack necessary clinical skills, experience, and competence to diagnose and treat patients independently. Moreover, they cannot meet standards expected from a qualified doctor which jeopardizes patient safety and well-being. Final year medical students often claim several challenges that affect their attendance in LGIS and clinical rotations, as well as their performance in assessments. When asked for the reasons, they point mainly to; inability to awake, health issues, family obligations, additional educational activities, and religious obligations. Poor time management, lifestyle issues, sleep disorders, and stress contribute to "inability to awake" as reason for deficient attendance.2 Many students have health problems, both physical and mental, which impede their ability to attend lectures and participate in clinical activities effectively. Some have responsibilities towards ill parents, and domestic issues leading to disruption in attending classes regularly and focus on studies. Additional activities include getting clinical electives, and attachments in other national international institutes. As per policy, marks are deduced from continuous internal Assessment (CIA) of Final Year MBBS students who don’t fulfill minimum criteria of attendance for LGIS and Clinical Rotations. Students who miss LGIS and clinical rotations often perform poorly in CIA, affecting their overall grades and readiness for final professional assessments. Failure to meet the required attendance percentage due to various reasons leads to ineligibility to appear in final professional assessments, delaying graduation. Students may opt for grievance and agitation if a large percentage of them have deficient attendance and are barred for appearing in final assessments as per assessment rules. In such cases, the faculty and administrators take actions such as plan remedial assessments, arrange ward or emergency teaching, and or impose fines to allow students with deficient attendance to appear in Professional assessments. As pass percentage in most of the Medical Colleges is ≥90%, most of these students who appear in final assessments will become doctors without issue. What is the answer? Focusing time management strategies, improved sleep hygiene, and mental health support are some of the options that can be used to deal with inability to wake in morning issue. Health issues of the students should be dealt efficiently by Faculty members of concerned specialty. Illnesses requiring short term management can be adjusted according to attendance policy. Students can spend extra hours at concerned rotations unit and take help from duty doctors to gain possible teaching training.  For illnesses requiring long term management i.e., absences from blocks such compensatory mechanisms should not be utilized. Student should reattend the LGIS and Clinical Rotations to gain missed competencies. Similarly domestic issues should not be given consideration to waive necessary teaching training. Additional students should be encouraged to plan educational activities, and religious obligations in vacations. The key to improving attendance and quality of education is implementation of rules without fear of consequences as inconsistent attendance and academic performance will lead to inadequate preparation for clinical practice. Possible and judicious flexibility in accommodating personal and health-related challenges can make life easier for both students and administrators. Incorporating and focusing professionalism education into the curriculum emphasizing importance of regular attendance, accountability, and ethical behavior in medical practice can improve students involvement in teaching and training

Examination of ancient artefacts from Europe (2200 BC-1200 AD) using material analysis techniques

In this dissertation, a methodology for the nano analytical analysis of the inorganic (metal alloys and stones) and organic (amber) ancient artifacts is presented. A detailed microchemical analyses is demonstrated in four pilot studies. The first pilot study includes comparing 11th-12th century archaeological objects from two distant regions: former East Prussia and Ostriv cemetery. The second pilot study includes a detailed surface examination of a Neolithic copper axe coming from an Eskilstorp village in present day Sweden. The axe’s chemical analyses is conducted to identify the intrinsic and extrinsic elements and authenticate whether a surface treatment of the axe was conducted. The study was conducted to highlight if a reclassification of the Neolithic axe’s is needed on the basis of the presence of a decorative silver coating on these Neolithic axes from South Scandinavia. The third pilot study was conducted to study the weathering and degradation of Baltic amber exposed to the environment over decades and analytically comparing Baltic ambers collected from Denmark and Russian origins. The last pilot study consisted of identifying metallic traces on flint and testing the reliability of the trace element analysis methods. The trace element analyses is linked to examine the possibility of identifying whether metallic knapping tools were available in late Neolithic Denmark to produce flint sickles and daggers with intricate shapes

Role of Librarians’ Information Literacy Skills to Enhance Research Culture: A Case Study of University of Agriculture Faisalabad

This study has investigated the role of librarians’ Information Literacy (IL) skills to enhance the research productivity of Faculty Members of the University of Agriculture Faisalabad, Punjab, Pakistan. The population of the study was the faculty members of the University of Agriculture and five library professionals of the university’s Central Library. A quantitative approach followed by a survey research design was adopted to meet the objectives of the study. Data were gathered through the instrument of the questionnaire. Quantitatively driven data was analyzed by SPSS Software. Results showed that Library professionals played a vital role in the promotion of research culture on the whole. IL instruction programs were of great value for the output of research productivity. Library professionals faced several barriers including lack of information literacy training, Unreliable power supply, the ineffective role of library organizations, lack of funding from institutions, lack of proficiency to use the internet, personal health issues, and official issues like leaves, permissions, work burden, etc. The most preferred suggestions to improve IL skills of LIS professionals and faculty members are; provision of funds or scholarships, revision of LIS curriculum, the active role of Pakistan Library Association (PLA), National IL skills training program for LIS professionals and faculty members, and instructional programs for the improvement of IL skills of faculty members and librarians

A Computational Redundancy Reduction Approach for High performaice and Low Power DSP Algorithm Implementation

In this paper, we present a general approach which specifically targets reduction of redundant computation in common d\u27igital signal processing (DSP) tasks such as filtering and matrix multiplication. The main idea presented in this work is to show that such tasks can be expressed as multiplication of vectors by scalars and fast multiplication can be achieved by sharing computation in such operations. The multiplication schemes considerably reduce redundant computation by decomposing the vectors in a manner which results in maximal computation sharing, thereby, resulting in a faster and potentially low-power implementation. Two decomposition approaches are presented, one based on a greedy decomposition and the other based on fixed-size lookup rule which lead to two multiplication architectures for scaling of vectors. Analysis of the proposed implementations shows a speed-up by a factor of up to 3 over a carry save array multiplier. Analog simulation of an example 8-bit multiplier shows a speed advantage by a factor of 1.85 and a power disadvantage of 1.9 over a conventional carry save array multiplier. Using voltage scaling, the power consumption of the example multiplier can be reduced to 56% of the carry save array multiplier