Introduction: Nursing documentation is the key to nursing care in hospitals. Nursing documentation contains ev- idences which demonstrate a significant association between the comprehensive level of nursing care and nurses’ professional practice. Therefore, nurses in Malaysia are trained to abide with the code of professional practice (1998) which required them to contrive a complete and comprehensive nursing documentation. Despite the importance of nursing documentation in the nursing professional practice, such study almost non-existent in Malaysia. Hence, there is a need to explore nurses understanding about existence of professionalism within their documentation, from a Malaysian context. Methods: The study utilized a qualitative approach which aimed to explore the perceptions among nurses in Malaysia on their documentation with relation to professionalism in nursing. Forty semi structured interviews were conducted in order to obtain an understanding of nurses’ views on their documentation and its influ- ence on their ways of preparing and completing their documentation. Thematic analysis was used to identify catego- ries and themes in nurses’ accounts of their documentation with relation to professionalism in nursing. Results: One of many profound findings from the study is the fear among nurses of “blaming culture” in that occurs their clinical setting. The nurses perceive “blaming culture” do not tolerate mistakes and they are more likely to be blamed for poor patient safety and insufficient quality of care. This is because nurses are directly involved in delivering care to patient or client in the hospital. “Blaming culture” however motivates nurses to ensure their documentation is com- plete, comprehensive and contemporaneous. Conclusion: Interestingly, the nurses perceive their documentation as an important evidence if there are possible future medical legal issues that they might have to involve with.
Objective: The objective of this study is to determine the optimal cut-off score for the Centre for Epidemiologic Studies Depression scale (CESD) according to Malaysian adolescent norms. Methods: This is a cross-sectional study. Nine hundred and thirty-one adolescents aged 13 to 17 years-old completed the CESD and Hopkins Symptom Checklist-depression scale (HSCL-depression). Results: Results from the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve, kappa coefficients and odds ratio analysis showed that CESD cut-off score of 27 was suitable to be used according to Malaysian norms, demonstrating a specificity of 93%. Conclusion: The findings suggest a cut-off score 27 should be used for screening of depression for Malaysian adolescents using the CESD. ASEAN Journal of Psychiatry, Vol. 15 (2): July - December 2014: 146-152.
To date, there has been no systematic research that investigates the rural community awareness and attitudes towards pandemic influenza H1N1 and its prevention measures in the context of Sarawak. There is also no systematic study about whether the initiatives to educate the public undertaken by the government and other agencies have empowered the rural communities to practice an effective self-care within the context of community, that assist to curb the potential spread of this disease. Our research aims to address these limitations. In this paper, we report a survey finding about the awareness and attitudes of the Serian community with regard to this area of research interest. We also investigate the relevant sources of information that the community relies on in understanding about the influenza and how it can spread. Overall, the outcomes of the survey reveal that a majority of our respondents has a relatively low level of knowledge and awareness particularly about the characteristics of the illness and how H1N1 virus can transmit. With regard to prevention measures, a majority of them reported good understanding and awareness about the effective self-care practices that can help to curb the potential spread of the influenza. The top five sources to obtain information about the influenza were: information from family, relatives, friends or neighbours; radio; TV; newspapers; and government health talk seminar or campaigns. The research outcomes can offer pragmatic contributions that can benefit the health campaigners and policy makers.