Being a Nursing Student In a Pandemic: Fear of COVID-19 and Clinical Practice

Aim: This research was conducted to examine the views of nursing students on fear of COVID-19 and clinical practice training during the pandemic process. Methods: It is a descriptive study. Students studying in the 2nd, 3rd and 4th grades of a university providing undergraduate nursing education in Turkey were included in the study. Subjects were recruited from a population of 235 students. The data of the research; the data were collected using the Introductory Information Form prepared by the researchers by scanning the literature and the "COVID-19 Fear Scale". Data analysis was done with SPSS 23.0. Number, percentage and Kruskal Wallis H test were used to evaluate the data. Results: The mean age of the students participating in the study was found to be 20.65 ± 1.36 and the mean score of COVID-19 was 15.43 ± 16.14. Students; a significant difference was found between their attitudes towards patient care in clinical practice, their thoughts on the impact of their clinical practice on their social lives, students' thoughts about going to clinical practice, and their thoughts about experiencing pain, and their COVID-19 fear levels

Detection of bifid mandibular condyle using computed tomography

Objective: To determine the frequency and characteristics of bifid mandibular condyle (BMC) using computed tomography (CT) evaluation. Study Design: A retrospective study was carried out using the CT records of 550 patients referred to the Medical School of Erciyes University (Kayseri, Turkey) between 2007 and 2010. T-tests were used to compare frequency of BMC between the left and right sides and between female and male patients. Statistical analysis was performed using SPSS software and a chi-squared test. Results: Of the 550 Patients, 10 patients (1.82%) were found to have BMCs. Five patients were female (50%) and five were male (50%). Of these 10 patients, 7 (70%) had unilateral and 3 (30%) had bilateral BMCs. As a result, a total of 13 BMCs were found in 10 patients. No statistically significant differences were found between either the right- and left-sided BMCs or between female and male patients (p >.05). Conclusions: To our knowledge, this is the first retrospective study investigating the prevalence and characteristics of BMC using computed tomography. Although BMC is an uncommon anomaly, it may be a more frequent condition in the Turkish population. Further studies and research on the orientation of duplicated condylar heads should be carried out

Assessment of the requisites of microbiology based infectious disease training under the pressure of consultation needs

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Training of infectious disease (ID) specialists is structured on classical clinical microbiology training in Turkey and ID specialists work as clinical microbiologists at the same time. Hence, this study aimed to determine the clinical skills and knowledge required by clinical microbiologists.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>A cross-sectional study was carried out between June 1, 2010 and September 15, 2010 in 32 ID departments in Turkey. Only patients hospitalized and followed up in the ID departments between January-June 2010 who required consultation with other disciplines were included.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>A total of 605 patients undergoing 1343 consultations were included, with pulmonology, neurology, cardiology, gastroenterology, nephrology, dermatology, haematology, and endocrinology being the most frequent consultation specialties. The consultation patterns were quite similar and were not affected by either the nature of infections or the critical clinical status of ID patients.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>The results of our study show that certain internal medicine subdisciplines such as pulmonology, neurology and dermatology appear to be the principal clinical requisites in the training of ID specialists, rather than internal medicine as a whole.</p

The frequency of Duchenne muscular dystrophy/Becker muscular dystrophy and Pompe disease in children with isolated transaminase elevation: results from the observational VICTORIA study

IntroductionElevated transaminases and/or creatine phosphokinase can indicate underlying muscle disease. Therefore, this study aims to determine the frequency of Duchenne muscular dystrophy/Becker muscular dystrophy (DMD/BMD) in male children and Pompe disease (PD) in male and female children with isolated hypertransaminasemia.MethodsThis multi-center, prospective study enrolled patients aged 3–216 months with serum alanine transaminase (ALT) and/or aspartate transaminase (AST) levels &gt;2× the upper limit of normal (ULN) for ≥3 months. Patients with a known history of liver or muscle disease or physical examination findings suggestive of liver disease were excluded. Patients were screened for creatinine phosphokinase (CPK) levels, and molecular genetic tests for DMD/BMD in male patients and enzyme analysis for PD in male and female patients with elevated CPK levels were performed. Genetic analyses confirmed PD. Demographic, clinical, and laboratory characteristics of the patients were analyzed.ResultsOverall, 589 patients [66.8% male, mean age of 63.4 months (standard deviation: 60.5)] were included. In total, 251 patients (188 male and 63 female) had CPK levels above the ULN. Of the patients assessed, 47% (85/182) of male patients were diagnosed with DMD/BMD and 1% (3/228) of male and female patients were diagnosed with PD. The median ALT, AST, and CPK levels were statistically significantly higher, and the questioned neurological symptoms and previously unnoticed examination findings were more common in DMD/BMD patients than those without DMD/BMD or PD (p &lt; 0.001).DiscussionQuestioning neurological symptoms, conducting a complete physical examination, and testing for CPK levels in patients with isolated hypertransaminasemia will prevent costly and time-consuming investigations for liver diseases and will lead to the diagnosis of occult neuromuscular diseases. Trial RegistrationClinicaltrials.gov NCT04120168

Design and Implementation of FPGA-Based Mexican Hat Wavelet for RealTime Wavelet Transforming

In this study, the Mexican hat function, one of the most popular main wavelet functions for real-time Wavelet transforms, is encoded in the VHDL language with the 32-bit IEEE-754-1985 floating point number standard and implemented on the FPGA synthesized in the Xilinx ISE Design Tools 14.7 program. The study was firstly modeled with the Mexican hat wavelet Matlab-based and tested with the help of the data set generated. After the testing phase Matlab-based Mexican hat wavelet reference to FPGA-based Mexican hat wavelet unit coded in VHDL with 32-bit floating-point standard and synthesized to Xilinx ISE program Virtex-6 chip VC6VLX75T vehicle and tested. FPGAbased Mexican hat wavelet unit was obtained as a maximum operating frequency of 185,086 MHz. The Matlab-based Mexican hat wavelet design sample data set at 0.890 s and FPGA-based Mexican hat wavelet unit can calculated in 1.408 µs. According to the results obtained, the FPGA-based Mexican hat wavelet provides high speed gain compared to the Matlab-based design.Bu çalışmada, gerçek zamanlı Wavelet dönüşümleri için en çok kullanılan ana dalgacık fonksiyonlarından biri olan Meksika şapkası fonksiyonu 32-bit IEEE-754-1985 kayan noktalı sayı standardı ile VHDL dilinde kodlanmış ve Xilinx ISE Design Tools 14.7 programında sentezlenerek FPGA üzerinde gerçeklenmiştir. Çalışma da öncelikle Meksika şapkası dalgacığı Matlab-tabanlı olarak modellenmiş ve oluşturulan veri seti yardımı ile test edilmiştir. Test aşamasından sonra Matlab-tabanlı Meksika şapkası dalgacığı referans alınarak FPGA-tabanlı Meksika şapkası dalgacığı ünitesi 32-bit kayan noktalı sayı standardı ile VHDL’de kodlanmış ve Xilinx ISE programında VIRTEX-6 çipi VC6VLX75T aracı için sentezlenmiş ve test edilmiştir. FPGA-tabanlı Meksika şapkası dalgacığı ünitesi maksimum çalışma frekansı 185.086 MHz olarak elde edilmiştir. Matlab-tabanlı Meksika şapkası dalgacığı tasarımı örnek veri setini 0.890 s’de ve FPGA-tabanlı Meksika şapkası dalgacığı ünitesi ise 1.408 µs’de hesaplayabilmektedir. Elde edilen sonuçlara göre FPGA-tabanlı Meksika şapkası dalgacığı Matlab-tabanlı tasarıma göre yüksek hız kazancı sağlamıştır