Assessment of Knowledge and Attitude of Health Workers About Dengue Fever at Al-Hodeidah Governorate

Dengue fever (DF) is a viral disease transmitted by mosquitoes and is emerging as a serious global health problem. However, there is still a lack of knowledge regarding the disease. The aim of the study: To assess the knowledge and attitude of health workers about dengue fever in Al-Hodeidah governorate. Subjects and methods: Descriptive research design was used in the study with convenient sampling. The current study included 337 participants. Results: The study revealed that 53% of health workers had a fair knowledge level about dengue fever and 78.65% of them had a positive attitude about dengue fever. Conclusion: The study concluded that about half of health workers had fair knowledge about dengue fever. While about three-quarters of them had a positive attitude about dengue fever. Recommendations: According to the current study, educational programs for nurses and midwives on dengue fever management and prevention should be organize

Physician Acceptance of Pharmacist Recommendations about Medication Prescribing Errors in Iraqi Hospitals

The objectives of this study were to measure the incidence and types of medication prescribing errors (MPEs) in Iraqi hospitals, to calculate for the first time the percentage of physician agreement with pharmacist medication regimen review (MRR) recommendations regarding MPEs, and to identify the factors influencing the physician agreement rate with these recommendations. Methods: Fourteen pharmacists (10 females and 4 males) reviewed each hand-written physician order for 1506 patients who were admitted to two public hospitals in Al-Najaf, Iraq during August 2015. The pharmacists identified medication prescribing errors using the Medscape WebMD, LCC phone application as a reference. The pharmacists contacted the physicians (2 females and 34 males) in-person to address MPEs that were identified. Results: The pharmacists identified 78 physician orders containing 99 MPEs with an incidence of 6.57 percent of all the physician orders reviewed. The patients with MPEs were taking 4.8 medications on average. The MPEs included drug-drug interactions (65.7%), incorrect doses (16.2%), unnecessary medications (8.1%), contra-indications (7.1%), incorrect drug duration (2%), and untreated conditions (1%). The physicians implemented 37 (37.4%) pharmacist recommendations. Three factors were significantly related to physician acceptance of pharmacist recommendations. These were physician specialty, pharmacist gender, and patient gender. Pediatricians were less likely (OR= 0.1) to accept pharmacist recommendations compared to internal medicine physicians. Male pharmacists received more positive responses from physicians (OR=7.11) than female pharmacists. Lastly, the recommendations were significantly more likely to be accepted (OR= 3.72) when the patients were females. Conclusions: The incidence of MPEs is higher in Iraqi hospitalized patients than in the U.S. and U.K, but lower than in Brazil, Ethiopia, India, and Croatia. Drug-drug interactions were the most common type of MPEs in hospitals. Physician specialty and pharmacist gender and patient gender significantly influenced physician agreement with the pharmacist comments. Only one-third of the pharmacist recommendations were implemented. Phone drug applications would be helpful for daily hospital pharmacy practice. More pharmacist-physician collaboration is needed to address MPEs. Pharmacist-led MRR can identify and address MPEs to improve patient safety.   Type: Original Researc

Synthesis, characterization and application of magnetic nanoparticles in the removal of copper from aqueous solution

Abstract The present study focused on the synthesis of magnetite nanoparticles in the removal of copper from aqueous solutions. Magnetite nanoparticles were developed by co-precipitation method for the adsorption of copper from aqueous solution. The characteristics of the synthesized nanoparticles were assessed using Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), X-ray diffraction (XRD), field emission scanning electron microscope (SEM) and energy-dispersive X-ray (EDS) analyses. Batch adsorption experiments were performed by varying the solution pH, contact time, stirring speed, adsorbent dosage and concentration of the effluent. The magnetic nanoparticle showed an excellent performance in removing copper under the following optimized conditions: pH 2, contact time = 75 min, initial concentration of copper = 100 ppm, adsorbent dosage = 0.6 g and stirring speed = 150 RPM. Thus, the developed magnetic nanoparticle has the potential to be used for the removal of copper from aqueous solution