Medical errors : Healthcare professionals’ perspective at a tertiary hospital in Kuwait

Medical errors are of economic importance and can contribute to serious adverse events for patients. Medical errors refer to preventable events resulting from healthcare interactions, whether these events harm the patient or not. In Kuwait, there is a paucity literature detailing the causes, forms, and risks of medical errors in their state-funded healthcare facilities. This study aimed to explore medical errors, their causes and preventive strategies in a Kuwait tertiary hospital based on the perceptions and experience of a cross-section of healthcare professionals using a questionnaire with 27 open (n = 10) and closed (n = 17) questions. The recruited healthcare professionals in this study included pharmacists, nurses, physicians, dentists, radiographers, hospital administrators, surgeons, nutritionists, and physiotherapists. The collected data were analysed quantitatively using descriptive statistics. A total of 203 participants filled and completed the survey questionnaire. The frequency of medical errors in Kuwait was found to be high at 60.3% ranging from incidences of prolonged hospital stays (32.9%), adverse events and life-threatening complications (32.3%), and fatalities (20.9%). The common medical errors result from incomplete instructions, incorrect dosage, and incorrect route of administration, diagnosis errors, and labelling errors. The perceived causes of these medical errors include high workload, lack of support systems, stress, medical negligence, inadequate training, miscommunication, poor collaboration, and non-adherence to safety guidelines among the healthcare professionals.Peer reviewe

DEVELOPING AN AGENT-BASED MODEL OF PEDESTRIAN WAYFINDING TO CONDUCT THE BEST TOURISTIC PATH IN HISTORIC DISTRICTS

A historic district is a historic and cultural conservation area that reflects traditional aspects from the past. A sense of memorable pathway allows pedestrian to experience the city happily and attract touristic activity in urban historic districts. The characteristics of touristic districts which facilitate pedestrian movement help in determining the optimum track. The aim of the research is to create an agent-based model (ABM) to simulate the activity of pedestrians in historic districts in order to way find the best touristic paths. Using Space-Syntax, a simulation of the interaction of tourists with the attraction points in old districts pathway will be made in two different case studies located on North Lebanon. A comparison will be made between the simulation model results and field observation. Findings show that the results of the simulation are different than the real environment. The importance of the research is based on developing a framework that helps urban designers and individuals that are concerned with tourism to find the best factors that can affect tourist way-finding and thus being able to develop these districts

Field Verification of the Energy-Based Procedure to Predict the Liquefaction Potential of Soil Deposits

This paper presents field evidence in support of the energy-base procedure to predict the liquefaction potential of soil deposits. Two recorded earthquake events which occurred at the Wildlife Site: Elmore Ranch earthquake (11/23/1987) and Superstition Hills earthquake (11/24/1987), representing nonliquefaction and liquefaction case histories respectively, were utilized to verify the energybased procedure in field situations. The nonlinearity and the degradation of shear stiffness and strength of soil deposits subjected to earthquake loading under undrained conditions were incorporated in the reconstruction of the shear stress-stain response. The effects of multi-directional excitation on the liquefaction potential and the build-up of pore water pressure were also investigated. Finally, a unit energy-pore pressure model was confirmed by the comparison of the calculated and recorded pore ressure time histories

The NorduGrid architecture and tools

The NorduGrid project designed a Grid architecture with the primary goal to meet the requirements of production tasks of the LHC experiments. While it is meant to be a rather generic Grid system, it puts emphasis on batch processing suitable for problems encountered in High Energy Physics. The NorduGrid architecture implementation uses the \globus{} as the foundation for various components, developed by the project. While introducing new services, the NorduGrid does not modify the Globus tools, such that the two can eventually co-exist. The NorduGrid topology is decentralized, avoiding a single point of failure. The NorduGrid architecture is thus a light-weight, non-invasive and dynamic one, while robust and scalable, capable of meeting most challenging tasks of High Energy Physics.Comment: Talk from the 2003 Computing in High Energy Physics and Nuclear Physics (CHEP03), La Jolla, Ca, USA, March 2003, 9 pages,LaTeX, 4 figures. PSN MOAT00

Beneficiation of some Egyptian Glass Sands

The attrition-scrubbing of some Egyptian glass sands was necessary for the disintegration of the ferruginous clayey coating on quartz grains. The effects of time of attrition-ing, impeller speed and solid/liquid ration were investi-gated. Classification of the scrubbed sands resulted in the removal of a slimy fraction and yielded a product having 0.065% Fe. Acid attritioning of sand with commer-cial HCL at room temperature did not affect the iron, coat-ing quartz particles

Validation of the Energy-Based Method for Evaluating Soil Liquefaction in Centrifuge

Extensive research has been conducted at Case Western Reserve University to introduce and evaluate the energy concept in defining the liquefaction potential of soils when subjected to dynamic loads. Generalized relationships were obtained by performing regression analyses between the energy per unit volume at the onset of liquefaction and liquefaction affecting parameters. This study deals with evaluating and examining the suitability of these relationships using centrifuge modeling. Centrifuge liquefaction testing of several soils with different grain-size characteristics made it possible to evaluate the validity of the energy method in determining the liquefaction potential of a soil deposit. Dynamic centrifuge tests were conducted on scaled pore fluid-saturated models, prepared in a laminar box, representing a prototype thickness of 7.6 m. A simplified procedure for estimating the energy per unit volume from the recorded horizontal accelerations and the lateral displacements at different depths is presented. The total energy at the onset of liquefaction is obtained from the stress-strain time histories from centrifuge testing results and compared with the same energy calculated from regression equations developed through torsional series tests. A rational procedure to decide whether or not liquefaction of a soil deposit is imminent can be formulated by comparing the calculated unit energy from the time series record of a design earthquake with the resistance to liquefaction in terms of energy, based on in situ soil properties

Efficacy of aqueous and methanol extracts of Randia nilotica against Migrating juvenile of Schistosoma mansoni in comparison with Praziquantel in Mice

Schistosomiasis is an important parasitic disease in the tropics. Praziquantel is unable to treat the migrating juvenile which stressed the need for new drugs. Objective: To evaluate the effectiveness of a plant (Randia nilotica) used traditionally to treat migrating juvenile form of schistosoma mansoni. Methods: Sets of experiments were carried out using both aqueous and methanol extracts of R. nilotica andPraziquantel drug to evaluate their efficacy against migrating schistosomulae by different routes of administration and regimens. First group given was 1 ml of 10 000 ppm of aqueous extract orallyand intrapratonially from day 2-8 post infection. Second group was given three doses of 1 ml of 500 ppm of methanol extract on day 7, 21 and 35 after infection. The third group of mice was given 7 doses of Praziquantel at 60 mg /kg orally from day 2-8 post infection.Results: It resulted in significant reduction in total worm burden at 50% and 73% respectively. The size of worms was very small. Obvious reduction result in mean eggs counts in liver and intestine permouse in first group. The total worm burden reduction was 83% but the worms were normal, very active (high motility rate) and no dead worms in second group. The third group of mice, showed non significantreduction in total worm burden which was (29%).The worms were normal, very active. Conclusion: We concluded that the aqueous extract of R. nilotica is highly effective against immature worms of S. mansoni.Keywords: worms burden, intrapretonial, cirrhosis

Atlas Data-Challenge 1 on NorduGrid

The first LHC application ever to be executed in a computational Grid environment is the so-called ATLAS Data-Challenge 1, more specifically, the part assigned to the Scandinavian members of the ATLAS Collaboration. Taking advantage of the NorduGrid testbed and tools, physicists from Denmark, Norway and Sweden were able to participate in the overall exercise starting in July 2002 and continuing through the rest of 2002 and the first part of 2003 using solely the NorduGrid environment. This allowed to distribute input data over a wide area, and rely on the NorduGrid resource discovery mechanism to find an optimal cluster for job submission. During the whole Data-Challenge 1, more than 2 TB of input data was processed and more than 2.5 TB of output data was produced by more than 4750 Grid jobs.Comment: Talk from the 2003 Computing in High Energy Physics and Nuclear Physics (CHEP03), La Jolla, Ca, USA, March 2003, 7 pages, 3 ps figure

Modélisation de l'impact de projectiles sur des installations voisines : couplages mécano-probabiliste

National audienceLes projectiles engendrés lors d'une explosion d'un réservoir sont des menaces pour d'autres équipements environnants et peuvent entraîner des explosions successives