Introduction: The National Centre for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM) defines complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) as a group of diverse medical and health care systems, practices, and products that are not generally considered part of conventional medicine. Many types of CAM practices, and they may be grouped into categories such as natural products, mind–body, and body-based practices. A broad collection of own-care and practitioner-based practices, (CAM) has been a major stream health care to meet the primary health care needs of people for centuries. A good proportion of the world’s population, even in developed countries, continue to depend on CAM. This study aimed to find out the knowledge, attitude, and responses among nursing students of Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, Universiti Malaysia Sabah, Malaysia. Methods: This cross-sectional study was carried out between June 2015 and June 2016. One hundred and eight (108) nursing studentsparticipated by simple random sampling. After taking informed consents, data were collected by structured questionnaire. The first section of survey data contained demographic profille. The second, third and fourth sections of the survey instrument consisted of the items assessing the knowledge of, interest in, and attitudes toward CAM. The last section consisted items to assess the attitude towards the teaching-and-learning in the curriculum. Descriptive statistics were used to present the data. Results: Out of 108 students, there were 19 males and 89 females. Knowledge did not have any relation (p>0.05) to response towards CAM but both positive and negative attitude was significantly (p
Introduction: The healthy, active, and receptive huge student population is potential blood donors to meet safe blood requirements. The study aimed to assess the current level of knowledge regarding blood donation of nursing students of the Faculty of Medicine & Health Sciences, UMS and to observe their attitude towards voluntary blood donation and to explore their practice as a voluntary blood donor. Methods: This cross-sectional study was con- ducted from July 2015 to June 2018 among one hundred and eight (108) nursing students who were included in this study by simple random sampling. The researchers explained the study design, objectives, and methodology to the selected subjects and obtained written consent from them. The study assessed the current level of knowledge and observed their attitude towards voluntary blood donation and explored their active involvement in donating blood through a validated questionnaire. Results: There were 89 female and 19 male participants in the study. Almost ev- ery student (96%) knew their blood group and most of them were correct about the health status of a blood donor. They had a lack of knowledge regarding the time required for blood donation and the amount of blood collected in each bag. Although most of the students were very favourable to donate blood, only 34% had previous experience of donating blood out of them; only 6% regularly donated voluntarily and on demand. Conclusion: From this finding, it can be recommended that measures for increasing knowledge regarding blood donation should be taken, and that would result in increased blood donation.
Introduction: Iron deficiency anaemia (IDA) is the most common nutritional anaemia in the world that affects in- dividuals in both developed and developing countries including Malaysia. The prevalence of IDA among school- children is crucial to know as IDA may contribute to poor mental and school academic performance. Hence, the objective of the study was to diagnose the present prevalence of IDA and to analyse the association with probable risk factors. Methods: This cross-sectional study was carried out from August 2017 to February 2018 among 261 school children, who aged between 8 to 10 years in Kudat, Sabah, were selected through simple random sampling. After getting informed consent from the parents or guardians of the participants self-administered validated question- naire was used to gather information regarding socio-demographic data, knowledge, attitude and practice towards iron deficiency anaemia and Food Frequency Questionnaires. The blood sample was collected for confirmation of anaemia through serum haemoglobin (Hb) concentration and determination of iron status through serum ferritin, serum iron and serum TIBC and stool samples were collected for children identified with anaemia for soil-transmit- ted helminths analysis. Results: Out of 82 anaemic students, 36 were suffering from iron deficiency anaemia. The BMI status, the presence of soil-transmitted helminths and level of knowledge regarding IDA had highly significant (p
Cigarette smoking is considered as the symbol of adulthood and as a friend during stress and loneliness. The developing countries in South Asia where the largest segment of the population is comprised of adolescents are more susceptible to smoking epidemic and its consequences. A cross sectional survey among 304 randomly selected medical students was carried out to determine their smoking habit of a selected medical college in Dhaka, from 1st October to 31st December 2014. The respondents were from 16 to 20 years of age, with mean (±SD) of 16.8 (±1.9) years. Among them (including 28 girl students), 96(31.5%) were non-smokers. The remaining 208(68.4%) were smokers, among them 43(20.6%) were regular smokers, and 165(79.3%) were occasional smokers. All 28 female students were non-smokers. Regarding duration of smoking, 42(20.2%) respondents smoked for less than 6 months, 64(30.8%) for 6 months to 1 year, 88(42.3%) for 1 to 4 years, 11(5.3%) for 5 to 10 years and a least 3(1.4%) smoked for more than 10 years. Thirty six percent of current smokers smoked more than 10 sticks per day compared
with thirty percent who smoked 6 to 10 a day. Significantly more users knew that it causes tuberculosis, heart attack, cancer and development of hypertension. Overall, students’ major sources of information were doctors (69.7%), medias (47.7%), parents (9.2%) and friends (3.3%). As the prevalence of smoking among medical students was found very high hence, the multi-pronged intervention strategy is needed to tackle the problem. Anti-tobacco education and awareness should be adopted in the curriculum of schools and colleges. All forms of tobacco advertising and promotional activities should be banned, and parents should be encouraged to adopt more responsible attitudes toward smoking in the home.
Introduction:Dermatoglyphics have been used extensively to characterize populations, analyse the nature and origin of human variation and population structure and evaluate the micro-differentiation of populations. Dermato-glyphics is considered as a sensitive indicator of intrauterine anomalies and known to be one of the best available diagnostic tools in genetic disorders. KadazanDusun and Bajau are the major ethnic groups of Sabah. The aim of the study was to study the distribution of fingerprint patterns on different digits in these two ethnicities of Sabah and to find if any variation occurs in fingerprint pattern qualitatively between these ethnicities. Methods: This cross-section-al study was conducted from March’ 2016 to February’ 2018 at different villages of Kudat, Ranau, Kota Belud, Kota Kinabalu and Papar, Sabah. After obtaining informed consent 400 persons (KadazanDusun 250, Bajau 150) were included in this study by stratified random sampling. Demographic data and history of present and past illness were obtained from each subject through a valid questionnaire. Finger and palm prints were photographed using Nikon D5200 camera and later were grouped into different types manually. Results: There were 205 female and 195 male participants in the study. Among the three types of fingerprints, whorls were more abundant (>50%) in the thumbs, index, ring and little fingers whereas loops were observed more (>55%) in the middle fingers. The arches were the least (0-3%) observed pattern in all the fingers. The dermatoglyphic pattern of right and left index fingers were only significantly different (p0.05) difference in respect of left and right hands and gender. Conclusion: The study findings would serve as a baseline data for further studies to develop data base of the dermatoglyphic pattern of major ethnic groups of Sabah which would facilitate non-invasive diagnosis of congenital anomalies and various genetic disorders.
An Objective Structured Clinical Examination (OSCE) is a tool of assessing the clinical school often used
in the education system of the healthcare system. Traditional Oral Examination (TOE) is also a clinical
examination where students are being tested by an examiner panel (1 or 2 members) on their clinical
activities and knowledge. It is designed to objectively test competence in skills such as history taking,
clinical examination, communication and clinical procedures. The Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences
of Universiti Malaysia Sabah (UMS) also use OSCE for assessing clinical students. The aim of this study
was to compare the performance between the traditional oral examination (TOE) and OSCE among
undergraduate medical students. Study populations were the 3rd year MBBS students of the Faculty of
Medicine and Health Sciences of Universiti Malaysia Sabah (UMS). Number of students was 87. All
students underwent traditional oral examination after finishing a 2 months module. The same students
participated in the OSCE on the same day evening. Scores of each student were collected. Mean of the
scores were calculated. P value was measured by Student’s t test to evaluate the significant difference
between both the variables (traditional examination mean and OSCE mean) at 5% confidence interval (CI).
P-value was 0.00015 in 5% confidence level in two tailed hypotheses. As the value was less than 0.05 so
null hypothesis was rejected and alternate hypothesis was accepted. There was significant difference between the means of both the examinations. So it could be concluded that students’ performance was
significantly better in the OSCE over the traditional oral examination.
Introduction:Obesity or overweight and its consequences are important public health problems globally resulting in a significant cause of morbidity such as hypertension, Diabetes Mellitus, hypercholesterolaemia, coronary artery disease, stroke, sleep apnoea, cancers and mortality which also render distressing financial burden on everyone. It is imperative to intervene in momentous strategies for early detection to prevent the weight-related epidemic. Methods:It was a health survey conducted in June 2019 to detect the prevalence of obesity and overweight problems and the resultant detrimental health conditions among the year 1 and year 2 medical students of the University Malaysia Sa-bah. The survey was done on 145 students aged between 19-23 years. The height, weight, BMI, waist circumference, blood pressure and capillary random blood glucose were measured. Pearson correlation and Chi-square tests were done to find an association between BMI and probable factors using SPSS. Results: The prevalence of obesity was 8.2%. High blood pressure was recorded in 23.45% participants where both systolic and diastolic blood pressure was high in 18.6%, only systolic blood pressure was high in 37.2% and only diastolic blood pressure was high in 28.3% among 145 students. There was no impaired glucose tolerance among the participants. There was a positive correlation between BMI and systolic (r=0.518, p
Introduction:A unilateral enlarged tonsil always is a suspicion of carcinoma. Especially if it is with fungating ulcer-ative surface. Neoplasms in unilaterally enlarged tonsil include squamous cell carcinomas and lymphomas. Lym-phomas in oropharynx are not common specially with fungating surface. Usually lymphomas in these areas are Non-Hodgkin’s type. Case description: A 62-year-old woman was admitted in the tertiary level hospital of Kota Kinabalu, Sabah, with the complaint of sore throat, odynophagia and right neck swelling. She was treated as a case of acute tonsillitis by general practitioner without any noticeable improvement. Oral cavity examination revealed a hugely enlarged right tonsil with fungating ulcerative surface and almost obstructing the oropharynx. Trismus was seen which make the examination difficult. A non-tender right upper neck swelling was palpable. All baseline lab-oratory investigations were normal. A contrast-enhanced computed tomography (CECT) showed a heterogeneously enhancing mass at oropharynx compromising the airway, right supraclavicular lymphadenopathy. Histology of biop-sy from right tonsillar mass showed High grade B-cell lymphoma. Chemotherapy was planned. First cycle of chemo-therapy was administered, Patient was discharged home with the complete plan of chemotherapy. Conclusion: This patient was clinically suspicious of carcinoma of palatine tonsil. But later proven as high grade B-cell lymphoma. All unilateral enlarged tonsils are not always carcinoma.
Besides the common respiratory symptoms or viral pneumonia, COVID-19 is also presented with different neurological symptoms. Olfactory dysfunction (OD) or impairment of the sense of smell is one of the common neurological symptoms being reported in infection caused by Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The severity varies from anosmia to microsmia or hyposmia. OD could have a potential early screening and diagnostic value besides other neurological and common respiratory symptoms. In our descriptive concise review, we aimed to elicit the manifestation of olfactory dysfunction as an early predictor of SARS-CoV-2 infection. We are also aiming to establish, OD as a quick and reliable assessment tool of COVID-19 risk, among the healthcare workers and contact tracers, which can justify self-quarantine of the person as well as recommendation for testing on a priority basis. We have also focused on, any effect to produce this symptom by the drug used for treatment in COVID-19, and if the old age of the patient showing any extra influence to develop OD in COVID-19.