Purpose The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic may increase demand for healthcare professionals (HCPs), either because of a HCP shortage due to illness or because of the need to increase surge capacity. Final-year medical students are one of the resources potentially available to expand the workforce. There is a need to explore the willingness of final-year medical students to meet this demand, examine their perceived competence, and determine how their overall perceived competence correlates with their willingness. Methods A cross-sectional study using a self-administered electronic questionnaire was used. The questionnaire included demographic data, students’ self-perceived competence derived from the patient care theme of the Saudi Medical Education Directives (SaudiMED) framework, and their willingness to be measured on a 5-point Likert scale. The study targeted final-year medical students at King Saud University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Results The number of participants was 134 (56.1% response rate), of whom 47 students (34.3%) were willing to work, while 31 (23.1%) were somewhat willing. The mean total self-perceived-competence score was 58.36/88 (66.3%). Demonstration of essential clinical skills had the highest mean score 11.48/16 (71.8%) among learning outcomes. There was a positive moderate correlation between willingness and mean perceived-competence score (Spearman correlation coefficient=0.45, p<0.001). Conclusion Fifty-seven percent of medical students were willing to work as part of the healthcare workforce during the COVID-19 pandemic. Better overall self-perceived competence appeared to correlate with more willingness. Students perceive themselves to be more competent in essential clinical skills. Appropriate training and supervision are suggested in all tasks assigned to them, with additional care required in areas with a lower perceived competence, such as prescription writing and essential clinical procedures.

Objectives To determine the factors motivating the consumers towards self-medication, the intended indications and the consumers' perceptions about complications that may arise due to its use. Design Cross-sectional community based prospective study Place and duration of study Community pharmacies located at various locations of Hail, Saudi Arabia from January 2019 to March 2019. Methods The subjects of this cross-sectional study were people visiting community pharmacies for self-medication. Data on 663 participants was collected through a validated questionnaire prepared on the basis of WHO guidelines for the regulatory assessment of medicinal products for use in self-medication. Two trained data collectors visited the randomly selected community pharmacies, approached and interviewed the consumers purchasing medicines without prescriptions. Data was entered in SPSS and analyzed using descriptive and inferential analyses (alpha level = 0.05). Results Out of 663 respondents, 68.6% were university graduates; and 33.9% were healthcare professionals. Consumers preferred self-medication mainly for headache (85.8%), cold and sore throat (80.8%), cough (75.7%) and fever (71.8%) with the justification that these illnesses were minor (90.2%), time saving (82.2%), convenient (74.7%), quicker relief (66.1%), and economical (61.2%). Occupation was significantly associated with the reasons for preferring self-medication (p<0.

Pharmaceutical care can be given in all settings: The community, hospitals, long-term care, and the clinic. However, published literature indicates that there is a substantial barrier to implementing pharmaceutical care programs in community pharmacies. This review was conducted to discover gaps and limitations in pharmaceutical care services in community pharmacies in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA). We searched PubMed and other available scientific website databases using the following key words to retrieve the relevant articles: Community Pharmacy, Healthcare System, Pharmaceutical Care, KSA. Two authors independently screened the titles and abstracts of promising articles. They discarded irrelevant studies and retained studies, and reviews that held the promise of relevant data or information. The review revealed that only one out of the four studies conducted in KSA retrieved by the authors reported pharmaceutical care service other than dispensing. The same results were reported in other studies conducted in some developing countries. All pharmaceutical care services were reported in studies conducted in Europe. The authors came to the conclusion that in KSA, dispensing of medicines is the dominant service provided by community pharmacists and that there was very limited if not a total absence of other pharmaceutical care services.

Autism and related disorders are increasingly prevalent behavioral syndromes of impaired verbal and nonverbal communication and socialization owing to neurodevelopmental abnormalities. The most recent estimate for the prevalence of autistic disorders is about 1% on a global scale. Etiology of autism is multifactorial and multidimensional that makes therapeutic intervention even harder. Heterogeneity of genetic factors, oxidative stress, autoimmune mechanism, and epigenetic mechanisms complicate the nature of pathogenesis of the disease. Nutraceutical approach to treat this disease is a promising strategy, especially in some areas, it is more attractive than others. This review critically analyzes the roles of vitamins and cofactors, dietary modifications and gut abnormalities, probiotics and prebiotics, phytochemicals, and environmental factors in order to determine the state of evidence in nutraceutical-based autism management practices. This article presents a systematic review of randomized- and placebocontrolled trials to examine the evidence supports the use of autism nutraceu10.1016/j.jsps.2012.10.001ticals. The results will be discussed in the light of all relevant evidence generated from other clinical and exploratory studies.

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