Persistent vegetative state (PVS) is a clinical condition of unawareness of self and environment with preserved sleep-wake cycles. Its clinical diagnosis can be a difficult unless a physician has adequate experience and expertise in evaluating neurological syndromes. Outcome is based on aetiology and age. Decisions on limiting life-sustaining treatment (LST) for these patients are emotionally and morally challenging. We present a case of a young boy who went into PVS following traumatic brain injury (TBI) with the aim to review some of the ethical issues regarding its management from Islamic perspective
There has been an increasing awareness on the end of life care for end stage renal disease (ESRD) patients and patients’ factors have been identified as pivotal elements in directing its implementation. Questionnaire has been a useful tool by researchers to assess on patients’ knowledge, perceptions and preferences on end of life care. However, up to date, there is no validated questionnaire developed in Malaysia for such purposes. Thus, this study aims to develop and validate questionnaires on end of life care knowledge, perceptions and preferences among ESRD patients in Kuantan. Materials and method: A cross-sectional study among haemodialysis (HD) patients aged 18 and above from 14 out-patient HD centres was performed. This study was divided into 4 phases i) developing the questionnaire involving related specialists and pre testing, ii) improving and editing the questionnaire and redistribution to 50 respondents for the pilot study, iii) factor analysis and iv) internal consistency reliability testing of the questionnaire. Results: The result of Factor analysis with Varimax rotation performed identified 3 domains for the 41 items, with 10 to 20 items in each domain. All the 41 analyzed items had a good factor loading of more than 0.4 with the lowest value of 0.421 and were nicely fit into 3 respective domains; knowledge, perception and preference. Internal consistency reliability analysis performed indicates that Cronbach’s α was between 0.5 to 0.7 for all factors which were higher than the level set for this study which is 0.5. Conclusion: The questionnaire is successfully validated and considered as a useful tool to be used. Nonetheless, improvement will still be necessary from time to time to ensure its relevance especially if it is to be used by different populations or countries of different background than Malaysia.
Chronic kidney disease (CKD) causes 70% of all death globally. The prevalence of CKD has shown an increasing trend for the past 20 years in Malaysia. Thus, determining the knowledge and awareness of CKD among healthcare students in preparing them to be a good healthcare provider in the future is important. This study aimed to determine the association between knowledge and awareness about CKD among International Islamic University Malaysia (IIUM) undergraduate students. A crosssectional study was conducted among 108 students using simple random sampling method. The questionnaire was given to the class representative to be self-administered to interested students. It had close-ended questions consisting of Part A to Part D. The scoring given for correctly answered items was one and the total score for Part C was 7 marks. Most of the students were female (70.4%). The mean knowledge score of CKD was 3.65 (SD = 1.12) with nearly half of the students (43.5%) classified as having poor knowledge. Most respondents were aware about CKD (99.1%) and have heard about it from medical personnel (48.1%) and the Internet (25.9%). Further analysis showed that only courses taken by the respondents were significantly associated with knowledge on CKD (p = 0.039). The level of knowledge among undergraduate students is still poor, yet they are aware about the existence of CKD and its aetiology. Therefore, the health sciences curriculum should emphasise on CKD management from a multidisciplinary aspect of care. It is recommended to conduct similar research among different student populations to create awareness and obtain important baseline findings.