This paper aims to review the literature with regards to the family caregivers of severe traumatic brain injury survivors and their needs for care at home. The search started by finding the relevant keywords from EBSCOhost: MeSH database. There were many related studies found by searching the following multiple databases. They are from Evidence Based Medicine (EBM) reviews @ Ovid, Journal @ Ovid Full text, Medline with Full text via EBSCOhost, CINAHL Plus with Full Text, Science Direct, and Google scholars' articles. The search terms were limited to publications ranging from 2010 to 2016. Several points were highlighted regarding the needs of family caregivers who had been taking care of traumatic brain injury survivors. It also provided information on the needs of family caregivers in terms of care, traumatic brain injury, TBI survivor complications, family caregiver's burden, caregiver challenges and the impact of traumatic brain injury to family caregiver's quality of life. Overall, the study shows that family caregivers face significant challenges toward care of TBI survivors. The review highlighted the support needed from the family caregivers, and other important facts about severe traumatic brain injury in order to understand the condition. Further research should focus on rehabilitation efforts on traumatic brain injury survivors.
Consumer consciousness on the concept of natural-based ingredients triggers the natural cosmetics market to grow. The
active compounds in natural ingredients offer valuable bioactivities such as antioxidant, photoprotection, anti-aging
and anti-inflammatory actions that useful for skincare, hair care and dental care. This review presents an overview on
natural ingredient, especially plant-derived, used in cosmetic products and the examples of Malaysian plants used for
cosmetic purposes.
Infrastructure damage due to land slide, fallen bridge and broken and submerged roads become the main constraint in providing good medical services to the flood victims and isolated places in the remote area. The health care provider has to face a huge challenge at delivering the medical services to the flood victims in Kluang district especially to the remote and isolated areas. This gives us a meaningful and valuable experience in managing such problem. From the true experience of the medical and health team and also the flood victims, few problems and major issues were detected. Other than the environmental factor, human error is another major area of concern of which the failure to interact with the District Flood Operation Centre leading to miscommunication resulting in delay of management of the patient. In smaller proportion, poor inter-agency collaboration and lacking of good equipment was also noted to be affecting the health care services. The issues raised here will hopefully be making better in managing disaster in the future.
Although one of the major users of flocculants are water and wastewater treatment industries, flocculants are also used in various food industries. The chemical flocculants are preferred widely in these industries due to low production cost and fast production ability. However, the negative effects of the chemical flocculants should not be neglected to gain the economic benefits only. Therefore, the researchers are working to discover efficient and economical flocculants from biological sources. Several attempts have been made and are still being made to extract or produce bioflocculants from natural sources such as plants, bacteria, fungi, yeast, algae, etc. The review revealed that significant amount of work have been done in the past, in search of bioflocculant. However, commercially viable bioflocculants are yet to be marketed widely. With the advent of new biotechnologies and advances in genetic engineering, the researchers are hopeful to discover or develop commercially viable, safe and environmentfriendly bioflocculants.
HIV/AIDS is a matter of concern and has become a pandemic disease that threatens the world population. It
has remained one of the priorities in global public health challenges. Caring for people with HIV/AIDS
requires clinical expertise as well as high-quality skills for health care providers. The purpose of the study was
to examine knowledge and attitude on HIV/AIDS patients among nursing students. A cross-sectional study
was conducted in Public University at Wast Cost Malaysia. The 126 respondents of nursing students agreed to
participate in the study using a self-administered questionnaire that was designed and modied after reading
and referring to articles, books, and journals. The results of the research revealed that nursing students, in
general, have a satisfactory knowledge (mean score 30.71), but had a moderate attitude toward HIV/AIDS
patient with total mean score 2.34. Most of the students (89.3%) get the knowledge regarding HIV/AIDS
through the internet. The majority of the students knew that blood transfusion (99.4%) and sharing
needles/syringe (99%) were the higher sources HIV/AIDS modes of transmission. Most of the students agreed
that peoples with HIV/AIDS should be treated in society with support from the community (97.0%). Although
the knowledge level of nursing students seems to be satisfactory, but they still showed the moderate attitude
towards HIV/AIDS patients. Thus, structured education programmes should be conducted by nursing faculty
to ensure that nursing students gain the necessary accurate knowledge and an appropriate attitude towards the
care of HIV/AIDS patients.
Objectives: This study aimed to investigate the perceptions of International Islamic University Malaysia (IIUM) Kuantan nursing students, clinical nurse instructors, and staff nurses of the support offered to student nurses during learning in a clinical setting.
Methodology: A cross-sectional study was carried out on undergraduate nursing students (n=118), and clinical instructors (n=8) at the faculty or Kulliyyah of Nursing, IIUM, using the Clinical Learning Environment, Supervision and Nurse Teacher (CLES-T) survey. Descriptive analysis was used to investigate the sociodemographic data, and further statistical tests were conducted with regard to their levels of perception.
Results: Overall, the participants perceived the clinical learning environment to be good. There was no difference in perception between nursing students and the clinical nurse instructors (p>0.05). There was no significant difference in terms of gender and levels of perception (p>0.05). This study did find a significant relationship between level of study and area of posting for students and perception levels (p
Introduction. The care of children with leukemia requires a high degree of observation and attention to ensure that the recommended treatment by the specialists is well implemented. This could somehow affect the social functionality, increase stress, anxiety and depression among caregivers of children with leukemia. Thus, this cross-sectional study was conducted to examine the prevalence and factors influencing stress, depression and anxiety among caregivers of
children with leukemia.
Methods. Number of sample is 54 respondents. Data were measured using the Bahasa Malaysia version of DASS-21 which was validated in previous study.
Results The results showed that prevalence of low level stress among caregivers to children with leukemia was 88.9% while prevalence of high level stress was 11.1%. The prevalence of low level anxiety was 90.7% and the prevalence of
high level anxiety was 9.3%. The prevalence of low level depression was 96.3% and the prevalence of high level depression was 3.7%. There were several factors that significantly influenced the stress and depression among
the caregivers (p <0.05). Among the factors associated with stress status were the religion of caregivers and gender of the patients (p <0.05). Factors associated with depression status were the sex of caregivers and the relationship between caregivers and family members (p <0.05).
Conclusions. In conclusion, socio demographic factors and the relationship between caregivers and family members affect stress and depression among caregivers while factors of knowledge-level do not affect stress, anxiety and depression among caregivers. Strategies are needed to help reduce stress, anxiety and depression among caregivers of children with leukemia.
Keywords: Stress - Anxiety - Depression - Caregivers - Children with leukemia.
This study shows that out of 774 patients tested, the house dust mite (Dermatophagoides pteronyssinus) provoked the maximum response (51.81%) the house dust was second (42.81%), and shrimp was third (23.92%). The moderate allergenic extracts were cat fur (12.79%), dog fur (10.72%), cockroach (8.47%) egg white (7.56%) and orris powder (6.30%). Among the low allergenic extracts were Aspergillus fumigatus (5.38%), Staphyloccus aureaus (3.53%) and chicken feathers (3.18%). The authors are of the opinion that the skin sensitivity test is an important diagnostic tool in allergic rhinitis and since this is a preliminary study any short listing of allergens to be used is not recommended yet. Skin sensitivity tests is a useful tool for differentiating allergic rhinitis from vasomotor rhinitis. Estimation of allergen specific IgE concentration in the serum will not offer any major advantages over the intradermal skin test in determining the clinical significance of house dust mite allergy. 21 The development of local materials for skin testing may enhance the usefulness of these investigations.
Residual disease in patients with acute leukaemia indicates unfavorable prognosis. The evaluation of remission using flow cytometry allows a better estimation of minimal residual disease (MRD) after induction chemotherapy in childhood acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (ALL) cases. Patients in morphological marrow remission with presence of blast cells of less than 5%, may still have up to 1010 leukaemic cells. However with flow cytometric analysis, lower levels of the residual leukaemic cells (1 in 104 cells) can be detected and it can be used as a tool to predict relapse. This study compared the presenting clinical and haematological features of children with ALL and their residual disease status determined by flow cytometry. Analysis of their MRD status following remission-induction chemotherapy were done at day-28, week-12 and week-20. The cases were also followed up to five years, to determine their survival status. Their residual disease status by flow cytometric immunophenotyping was also compared with their bone marrow findings morphologically. Thirty-eight cases of precursor B-ALL in pediatric patients from UKM Medical Centre (UKMMC) were analyzed. There was no significant correlation between demographic, clinical and haematological features with MRD status at day-28. However, there was a significant correlation between MRD status by flow cytometry and by morphological marrow examination at week-12. Three cases showed persistent MRD findings until week-20 where two of the cases relapsed and died subsequently. Twenty four patients were still alive after five years of follow up.
1st UMS INTERNATIONAL NURSING CONFERENCE IN CONJUNCTION WITH 11TH INTERNATIONAL NURSING STUDENTS’ FORUM. A view into the future of nursing: Nursing Transformation towards IR-4.0
Held at the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, Universiti Malaysia Sabah, Kota Kinabalu, Sabah, Malaysia. On 6-8th March 2020
Introduction: Vaping is a use of electronic devices which do not produce smoke or steam, rather an aerosol consisting of fine particles, containing varying amounts of propylene glycol, glycerine, flavourings and other chemicals. It is battery-powered devices that mimic the action of smoking. In Malaysia, vaping has become a major trend. Videos are going viral on social media showing school students in uniform proudly puffing away. The aim of this study was to find out the acceptance of vaping among medical and nursing students.
Methods: A descriptive cross-sectional study with multiple stage of sampling technique on population of 624 medical and nursing students. Total samples were 389, by Krejci Morgan (1970) sampling technique. Structured questionnaires by A. Gorukanti (2018) with 15 items consisted of knowledge, attitude and acceptance and attitude and believe as data collection tools.
Results: Results showed 9% to 10% of respondents are still smoking, they believed e-cigarette is safe and would not affect one’s health, as it is a water-based product trademarked. They also regard e-cigarette a way of quitting or cutting down smoking.
Conclusion: 10% of respondents consistently believed e-cigarettes is harmless. Although the percentage may look small but the impact on the public is huge. However, 90% strongly agreed e-cigarettes ‘vapour is dan- gerous to babies and kids. What concerns us is the consistent group of the 10%, are students who will become our healthcare providers in the future. Their strong-belief in vaping will influence the future of the public understanding, “If doctors and nurses said vaping is safe ... it is safe… right? why not. which is harmful. However, this study has impelled us not only to look at the strength and the significance outcomes of study and neglecting the trifle ones that may prime to serious healthcare consequences of the future society.
Rearrangement of the immunoglobulin heavy chain (IgH) gene has been used as a marker of lineage and clonality in the diagnosis of B lymphoproliferative disorders. A number of PCR-based techniques have been developed to overcome the disadvantages of Southern blotting, the standard technique in detecting IgH gene rearrangement. Using an established seminested PCR technique with consensus primers to the V and J regions of the IgH gene, we analysed DNA prepared from peripheral blood and/or bone marrow specimens from 30 cases of known B cell malignancies (16 chronic lymphocytic leukemia, 11 acute lymphoblastic leukemia and 3 Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma), 3 cases of T lymphoproliferative disease and 3 cases of reactive lymphocytosis diagnosed in Hospital UKM to detect rearranged IgH gene. We found that monoclonality as represented by the presence of rearranged IgH gene were demonstrated in all the 30 cases. The PCR findings showed 100% concordance with the Southern blot analysis results which also showed rearranged IgH bands in all the 30 cases. We also found that none of the cases of T lymphoproliferative diseases and reactive lymphocytosis showed presence of rearranged IgH band, suggesting that the amplification using the IgH primers is lineage-specific. In conclusion, we find the PCR a useful method to detect IgH gene rearrangement in peripheral blood and bone marrow specimen. Since the PCR results are comparable to that of the Southern blotting in demonstrating B cell monoclonality and owing to its many advantages we feel that it can replace the Southern blot technique for the diagnosis of B cell malignancies.
The presence of serum cold agglutinin can be the initial presentation of lymphoproliferative diseases. Conditions with persistent cold agglutinins are a spectrum of diseases that vary from benign lymphoproliferation of the "autoimmune-like chronic cold agglutinin disease" to malignant lymphoma. We report a case of a 72-year-old woman who presented with severe anaemia, hepatosplenomegaly and episodes of peripheral haemagglutination precipitated by cold exposure. The haemoglobin was 5.6 g/dL with a cold agglutinin titer of 1:256 at 4 degrees C and 1:8 at room temperature (30 degrees C). The cold agglutinin showed anti-I specificity and kappa light chain restriction. Peripheral blood showed atypical lymphoid cells with a B-cell immunophenotype. Immunoglobulin gene rearrangement study by polymerase chain reaction (PCR) showed an amplified band at 100 bp, consistent with a clonal proliferation of B-lymphocytes. We believe that our patient had cold antibody haemolytic anaemia as the initial presentation of a low-grade non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. The association of cold antibody haemolytic anaemia with low-grade B-cell lymphoma is unusual.
All-trans retinoic acid therapy induces maturation in acute promyelocytic leukaemia. We document in vivo evidence of differentiation by all-trans retinoic acid in a case of acute promyelocytic leukaemia which was characterized by cytoplasmic vacuolations.
A 35-year-old man from Bangladesh, who had been in Malaysia for approximately a year, was extensively investigated for more than two months in a state hospital for pyrexia with hepatosplenomegaly. However, no obvious cause of his illness was found. He was treated with multiple antibiotics with no resolution of pyrexia and hepatosplenomegaly. He was later referred to the Haematology Unit, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia for further assessment as a case of lymphoma. On carefully reviewing his bone marrow aspirate smears, the diagnosis of leishmaniasis (kala-azar) was finally made. The patient responded to treatment with pentamidine.
Masak lemak cili padi merupakan hidangan tradisional Melayu berasal dari Negeri Sembilan, Malaysia. Walaupun, ia popular dan disukai di kalangan rakyat Malaysia, ia jarang disediakan oleh golongan bekerjaya dan mempunyai masa yang terhad di rumah. Selain itu, faktor kesukaran untuk mencari bahan mentah dan menyediakan hidangan serta mengekalkan rasa dan kualiti masakan juga menyebabkan hidangan ini jarang disediakan di rumah . Melihat potensi dan keperluannya, satu kajian telah dijalankan untuk menghasilkan Kiub Masak Lemak Cili Padi (KMLCP). Kajian ini dijalankan untuk meninjau tahap penerimaan responden terhadap KMLCP. Instrumen soal selidik menggunakan skala Hedonic telah diedarkan secara rawak kepada 30 orang responden. Data telah dianalisis secara deskriptif dengan menggunakan SPSS versi 21. Analisis menunjukkan bahawa KMLCP diterima pada tahap baik oleh responden dengan nilai min 4.66. Kesimpulannya, KMLCP ini diterima secara optimistik oleh responden.
Centrifugation of blood samples to produce platelet-poor plasma is one of the important steps for coagulation testing. Reduction of the time required for specimen processing without affecting quality of results should be ideal for tests which require immediate results. Centrifugation of platelet-poor plasma (3580 rpm) for 15 minutes performed for routine coagulation tests would prolong the turn-around time for an urgent test (30 minutes). This study was done to determine the effect of reducing centrifugation time for routine coagulation tests in order to meet the turn-around time (TAT) for urgent tests. Seventy-nine blood samples sent for routine coagulation tests, were assayed for prothrombin time (PT), activated partial thromboplastin time (APTT), fibrinogen level and platelet counts, using two different centrifugation speed for plasma preparation: centrifugation at 3580 rpm for 15 minutes and rapid centrifugation at 4000 rpm for five minutes. Paired sample t-test showed that there was a significant
difference in the platelet count between the two groups (p=0.001). However, there was no significant difference in the normal APTT (p=0.16), abnormal APTT (p=0.80), abnormal PT (p=0.43) and the results of fibrinogen levels (p=0.36). In conclusion, rapid centrifugation at 4000 rpm for five minutes does not modify results of routine coagulation tests (PT, APTT and fibrinogen). It would be beneficial in providing rapid results for urgent coagulation tests.
Stress has a negative effect on student nurses well-being and can impede learning or motivate them and is conducive to learning. This study examined the perceived stress and factors that influenced daily students’ life among both the Diploma and Bachelor of Nursing students. A total of 241 nursing students were involved in this research project. Findings of this study indicated that junior nursing students (
Ventilated patients who require intensive care unit (ICU) treatment may encounter unpleasant experiences. These experiences may include factual incidents and delusional memories of ICU such as dreams, hallucinations and frightening experiences. A cross sectional study using “Intensive Care Experience Questionnaire” consisted of four domains: awareness of surrounding, frightening experiences, recall of experience and satisfaction with nursing care. Forty five participants who fulfilled the inclusion criteria were recruited in this study. This study was conducted in ICU of HUKM from January to March 2006. Results showed that 20 respondents (44%) were aware of their surrounding and 31 respondents (69%) reported frightening experiences. Majority of respondents (43 respondents, 96%) reported satisfaction with the delivery of nursing care. There was positive correlation between awareness of surrounding and their abilities to recall their experiences (p