Continuous professional development (CPD) has gained prominence in the last decade to meet improved self-development and health care services among health professionals. Being practitioners serving clients in health care, therefore, necessitates the importance of the physiotherapist’s participation in activities of CPD. This paper aims to identify how physiotherapists view CPD, barriers to its progress and its impact on healthcare practice. This is a qualitative study with one-to-one interview sessions involving open-ended questions to facilitate free flow of idea that are rich with information. Twentytwo physiotherapist (17 females and 5 males) participated. Four main themes were generated following analysis: (i) comprehension of what is CPD (ii) outcome of CPD (iii) barriers to undertaking CPD and (iv) strategies to improve participation in CPD. Further sub-themes were generated from the themes suggestive of physiotherapists’ awareness and concerns related to CPD activities and problems encountered when embarking on CPD participation. In conclusion, physiotherapists should recognise the importance of participation in CPD activities either for self-development or to provide effective health care services. The main barrier to CPD activities that was identified was a support system that facilitates enhancement in such activities. This has major implication such as mandatory participation in CPD among staff and for managers to ensure that an effective mechanism is in place such as funding, schedule events and moral support.
The goal of responsible engineers is the creation of useful and safe technological products and commitment to public health, while respecting the autonomy of the clients and the public. Because engineers often face moral dilemma to resolve such issues, different engineers have chosen different course of actions depending on their respective moral value orientations. Islam provides a value-based mechanism rooted in the Maqasid al-Shari'ah (the objectives of Islamic law). This mechanism prioritizes some values over others and could help resolve the moral dilemmas faced in engineering. This paper introduces the Islamic interpretive-evaluative maxims to two core issues in engineering ethics: genetically modified foods and whistleblowing. The study aims primarily to provide problem-solving maxims within the Maqasid al-Shari'ah matrix through which such moral dilemmas in science and engineering could be studied and resolved.
The involvement of women preachers in the field of preaching is also a major contributor to the process of delivering the preaching to the community. Thus, the importance of Islamic women's role in delivering the content of their preaching focused on aspects related to women and society based on the main sources of the Quran and the sunnah. Therefore, the objective of this study is to study the role of Muslim women in delivering the message of preaching to the community according to the Quranic perspective. This study uses qualitative method which is a documentary study which is accompanied by the arguments of the Quran, Hadith and the views of several commentators on the topic of the study. The study found that women play a very important role in communicating the message of faith such as issues of faith, sharia, morals and current issues of women and society based on the Quranic message. This is because the Muslim preacher's delivery is more personalized and influenced by a more feminine and family-oriented approach.
The advancement in human stem cell research has promised a viable alternative treatment for a range of ‘incurable diseases’ such as neurological diseases. To date, several studies have documented substantial evidences on the therapeutic properties of stem cells in promoting repair in different diseases including common neurological disorders i.e. ischaemic stroke and spinal cord injury. However, the progress of stem cell research has been surrounded by ethical issues which largely due to the usage of human embryos as one of the sources. These embryonic stem cells which originally derived from human embryo of aborted foetus or already existing human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) lines, has sparked an intense moral and religious argument among people of various faith, including Muslim community. From the therapeutic point of view, amongst the currently available stem cells, hESCs show the greatest potential for the broadest range of cell replacement therapies and are regarded as the most commercially viable. This review focuses on the major ethical issues, particularly to Muslim community, related to human embryonic stem cells research with special emphasis on the moral status of the embryo and the beginning of life according to the Islamic ethics and rulings. In this paper, we also discuss some ethical positions towards embryonic stem cell research in the Islamic world, including official regulations existing in some Muslim countries. We examine the justification and the necessity on the usage of hESCs following the newly discovered Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells (IPSCs) in the laboratory. In addition, we supplement the discussions with the general views and positions from the other two Abrahamic religions i.e. Christianity and Judaism.
Training dentists today is challenging as they are expected to provide a wide range of dental care. In the provision of good dental care, soft skills are equally important as clinical skills. Therefore in dental education the development of soft skills are of prime concern. This study sought to identify the development of soft skills when dental students are paired in their clinical training. In this perception study, four open-ended items were used to elicit students' feedback on the appropriateness of using clinical pairing as an instructional strategy to promote soft skills. The most frequently cited soft skills were teamwork (70%) and communication (25%) skills. However, both negative and positive behaviours were reported. As for critical thinking and problem solving skills, more positive behaviours were reported for abilities such as to explain, analyze, find ideas and alternative solutions, and make decisions. Leadership among peers was not evident as leading without legitimate authority could be a hindrance to its development. If clinical pairing is to be used as an effective instructional strategy to promote soft skills amongst students, clear guidelines need to be developed to prepare students to work in a dental team and the use of appropriate assessment tools can facilitate the development of these soft skills.