A Qualitative And Quantitative Assessment Of Medicine Use Patterns And Practices Among General Public In The State Of Penang, Malaysia

Penggunaan ubat secara tidak rasional menjadi masalah global dalam kalangan negara maju dan negara yang sedang membangun. Penggunaan ubat-ubatan merupakan amalan biasa untuk kebanyakan orang dalam merawat masalah kesihatan mereka The irrational use of medicines is a global problem in developed and developing countries worldwide. The use of medicines is a common practice for many people to treat their health problem

Public Attitude towards Mental Illness and Mental Health Services in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

Background: Stigma associated with mental illness prevents many mentally ill people and their caregivers from seeking help and receiving adequate treatment. People may refuse to seek help from mental health professionals for fear of social reaction and may try to hide the illness, which lead to inaccurate statistical presentation of the real problem in addition to poor health outcomes. Aim: The aim of the current research study was to investigate the attitude of general Saudi population toward mental illness and persons with mental illnesses and explore general Saudi population’ attitude toward mental health services available in Saudi Arabia. Methods: A descriptive corelation cross sectional research design was utilized on a sample of 3464 saudi adults recruited from different public areas and voluntarily accept to participate in the study. Data was collected using a survey questionnair consisted of sociodemographic data sheet, questions concerning personal experience with persons with mental illnesses, Attitudes towards mental Illness Scale (Shokeer, 2002) and attitude towards the mental health services questionnair. An explanation about the purpose and the nature of the study was offered for each individual potential participant. Subjects were assured about the confidentiality of the collected data and that it will be only used by the researcher for the purpose of the current study. Data were analyzed using SPSS version 22.0. Results: More than one third of the participants (36.9%) had a family member diagnosed with mental illness while around two thirds (62.2%) knew any person diagnosed with mental illness other than a family member. 36.5 percent of the participants agreed that they can speak with any person with mental illness and can go in a picnic with people with mental illnesses, 43.5% don’t feel afraid when dealing with persons with mental illnesses, 41.4% don’t refuse to sit with a person with mental illness. More than three quarters of the participants agreed that Saudi government must increase governmental fund spent on mental health hospitals as well as community mental health services, on the other hand only 18.7% agreed that Saudi community has enough mental health services. age of the participants, level of education, having a family member diagnosed with mental illness and knowing any person diagnosed with mental illness were  significantly correlated with the attitude towards mental illness and persons with mental illnesses scale score (p = 0.000). Conclusion: Despite the limited empirical evidence the present study infers that one third of the participants have an indecisive attitude toward mental illness and persons with mental illness. This makes it clear that there is still a way to go in accomplishing a positive attitude toward mental illness. Keywords: Public, attitude, mental illness, mental health services, Riyadh, Saudi Arabi

Evaluation Of Knowledge, Attitude And Beliefs Regarding Medicines Among Primary Schoolchildren

The use of medicine for the treatment of health problems is a common practice among children. Most children are forming attitudes, beliefs and expectations about medicines through their past experience with medicines, through the parents or by observing family members taking medicines. Very few studies have been conducted about medicine knowledge among Malaysian children. This study aimed to evaluate knowledge, attitudes and beliefs about medicines among primary schoolchildren and identify those factors that may associate with their knowledge, attitudes and beliefs. A cross-sectional survey was conducted among schoolchildren from grades 5 and 6 in four primary schools in Penang Island. A convenience and purposive sampling methods were used to collect the data through a self-administered questionnaire to all schoolchildren and their parents

Perceived Work-Related Stressors and Its Relationship with the Physiological and Psychological Well Being of Nursing Faculty Members

Background: Work related stress in nursing education is gaining the attention of nurseeducators and nurse researchers as the effects of stress on learning, persistence, academic success, and student satisfaction have been recognized. Nurse educators are facing the challenge of creating new ways of teaching and facilitating enhancedlearning experiences in clinical practice environments that are inherently complex, highly demanding, and unpredictable. The literature consistently reports the negativeeffects of excess stress and unsupportive relationships on wellbeing, self-efficacy, self-esteem,learning, persistence, and success (Del Prato et. al 2011).Aim of the study: The research study was looking at exploring the perceived work-relatedstressors and its relationship with the physiological and psychological wellbeing ofnursing faculty members working at the 3colleges of nursing affiliated to the National Guard health affairs, King Saud bin AbedAL Aziz for health sciences.Methods: An exploratory correlation comparative research design was utilized and a nonprobability (convenience) sample was designed to include all nursing facultymembers from the three sister colleges. The tool of this study consists of 5 main partsincluding the sociodemographic data of the participants and the Health and SafetyExecutive Management standards indicator tool (HSE indicator Tool) developed byCousins et al., (2004), comprises 35 items within seven stressor subscales in the formof short sentences and uses a 5-point Likert response scale to explore the work relatedstressors among nursing faculty members. Results: A total of  82 faculty members currently working in the three sister nursing colleges affiliated to King Saud bin Abdul-Aziz University or Health Sciences ,more than three quarters of the participants were non Saudi (n = 67, 81.7 %) .With regard to the work-related stressors all participants in the three settings mentioned that they have to work intensively as the most reported stressor with mean scores of 1.76 + 1.13, 2 + .83 and 2.27 + .55 for Riyadh, Jeddah and Alahssa subjects respectively.Kruskal-Wallis test showed statistically significant difference between the three groups with regard to their agreement about the statement “I find my job stressful” k = 6.531, p = .048.Three major sources of stress were identified including: insufficient funding and resources; unreasonable expectations from colleagues; and “lack of promotion opportunity” Conclusion and Recommendation: Work related stressors can no longer be considered an occasional, personal problem to beremedied with palliatives. It is becoming an increasingly global phenomenon, affecting allcategories of workers, all workplaces and all countries.From the results of the current study we can conclude that the academic staffs perceived their Job as stressful besides the difference in their perception to the factors and resources causing stress. Therefore, there is a need to understand the nature ofthat problem and to better manage it as, those stressors can detrimentally influence job satisfaction, psychological well-being and physical health. Key wards: Workplace stress, physiological wellbeing, psychological wellbeing, nursing faculty members, nurse educators, health and wellbein

Letter to editor: Familiarisation of children with medicines and their sources of information

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Sentiment analysis in geo social streams by using machine learning technique

Dissertation submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Geospatial TechnologiesMassive amounts of sentiment rich data are generated on social media in the form of Tweets, status updates, blog post, reviews, etc. Different people and organizations are using these user generated content for decision making. Symbolic techniques or Knowledge base approaches and Machine learning techniques are two main techniques used for analysis sentiments from text. The rapid increase in the volume of sentiment rich data on the web has resulted in an increased interaction among researchers regarding sentiment analysis and opinion (Kaushik & Mishra, 2014). However, limited research has been conducted considering location as another dimension along with the sentiment rich data. In this work, we analyze the sentiments of Geotweets, tweets containing latitude and longitude coordinates, and visualize the results in the form of a map in real time. We collect tweets from Twitter using its Streaming API, filtered by English language and location (bounding box). For those tweets which don’t have geographic coordinates, we geocode them using geocoder from GeoPy. Textblob, an open source library in python was used to calculate the sentiments of Geotweets. Map visualization was implemented using Leaflet. Plugins for clusters, heat maps and real-time have been used in this visualization. The visualization gives an insight of location sentiments

Public Key Cipher with Signature Based on Diffie-Hellman and the Magic Square Problem

In the present paper, wedeveloped a new variant of asymmetric cipher (Public Key) algorithm based on the Discrete Logarithm Problem (DLP) uses Diffie-Hellman key exchange protocol and the mathematical features of magic square. The proposed method exploits the DLP problem in the key exchange by using the final value of Diffie-Hellman key agreement, just as the dimension to the magic construction and through which determines the type of magic square construction if it is (odd, singly-even or doubly-even) magic square as well as through which determines starting number and the difference value. From the other point, it exploits the magic squares problem in encryption/decryption and signing/verifyingoperations. The developed methodextremely speed in the Encryption/Decryption process as well as in the digital signaturethat uses aSecure Hash Algorithm SHA-1, since the proposed cipher does not use logarithm and the factorization as the traditional algorithms in ciphering and deciphering operations just in the mutual exchanging, but it depends mainly upon the magic constant and magic sum as alternate that deduced from the result of multiplied fixed value, which selected randomly and imposesto keep secret, as we shall explained in the next sections

Idiopathic pulmonary hemosiderosis - A rare cause of chronic anemia

Idiopathic pulmonary hemosiderosis (IPH) is a rare disease marked by alveolar bleeding and accumulation of hemosiderin in the lungs. Here we present three cases of IPH. The first case is of a 26-year-old male with anemia, hemoptysis and dyspnea. Bronchoscopy confirmed diffuse alveolar hemorrhage (DAH). A diagnosis of IPH was made after ruling out other causes of DAH and observing good response to steroids. The patient\u27s condition improved with prednisolone and azathioprine. The second case is of 26-year-old female with severe anemia. Imaging suggested IPH and lung biopsy confirmed it. She died shortly afterwards. The third case is of a 7-year-old male with chronic anemia. CT was suggestive of IPH and lung biopsy confirmed the diagnosis. Later, patient developed posterior reversible encephalopathy syndrome (PRES). This patient is stable on azathioprine and prednisolone. We aim to emphasize the importance of considering IPH as a differential in patients with DAH or chronic anemia

Outcome of patients with visceral leishmaniasis in Diyala province

Background: Visceral leishmaniasis is the second largest parasitic killer in the world after malaria. Objective: The outcome of patient with visceral leishmaniasis in hospital samples depending on spot test for diagnosis. Patients and Methods: This study was conducted in Al-Batool Teaching Hospital in Baqubah- Diyala province, during the period from January 2015 to December 2015. Thirty five collecting cases were suspected to have visceral leishmaniasis. History was taken regarding residence, gender, age, animal contact, blood group type. Clinical examination and investigation were done using complete blood count, abdominal ultrasound and spot test. Results: In this study, thirty-five children were diagnosed as visceral leishmaniasis. It is found more among males (60%) than females (40%), more common in spring and winter, than in summer and autumn; which was (48.5%, 31%, 14% and 0.05%) respectively. High percentage recorded among patient with type (A) and (B) blood group, and less in (AB) and (O) (57%,22%,5%,14%) respectively also infection in rural area (71%) more than in urban (29%). Regarding the site of infection, organomegaly was (57%), splenomegaly (14%), hepatomegaly (17%), hepatosplenomegaly (26%) no-organomegaly(43%). All patients were anemic (43%), mild anemia (10 mg% and less) and (57%) severe anemia (7mg% and less). The percentage of duration of fever was 17%2 weeks. Conclusion: Visceral leishmaniasis is a common in patients live in rural areas that have contact with animals (Dog, fox and jackals)