Objectives:To identify the changing trends and crucial preventive approaches to road traffic accidents (RTAs) adopted in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) over the last 2.5 decades, and to analyze aspects previously overlooked.Methods:This systematic review was based on evidence of RTAs in KSA. All articles published during the last 25 years on road traffic accident in KSA were analyzed. This study was carried out from December 2013 to May 2014 in the Department of Family and Community Medicine, Taibah University, Al-Madinah Al-Munawwarah, KSA.Results:Road traffic accidents accounted for 83.4% of all trauma admissions in 1984-1989, and no such overall trend was studied thereafter. The most frequently injured body regions as reported in the latest studies were head and neck, followed by upper and lower extremities, which was found to be opposite to that of the studies reported earlier. Hospital data showed an 8% non-significant increase in road accident mortalities in contrast to police records of a 27% significant reduction during the years 2005-2010. Excessive speeding was the most common cause reported in all recent and past studies.Conclusion:Disparity was common in the type of reporting of RTAs, outcome measures, and possible causes over a period of 2.5 decade. All research exclusively looked into the drivers’ faults. A sentinel surveillance of road crashes should be kept in place in the secondary and tertiary care hospitals for all regions of KSA.

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Inter-professional education is one  of  the  transformations  in  medical  education.  Though  prevalent  more in developed than developing countries for about half a century, but only in the last 10 years has shown an overriding role in various health  related  fields.  Inter-professional  or  collaborative  education was started in order to  improve  health  care  delivery  by  incorporating  better  communication,  team  work, assigning responsibilities to individual providers and observing ethical values in a  health  care  setting, among  providers  of  various  professional  background.  World  Health  Organization  and  other  top rated education agencies have necessitated the role of IPE but with insufficient evidence from dif-   ferent fields of medical practice. The role of IPE has been  determined  in  medical  education,  by  se- lecting work setting, types of professionals, content of the course, data collection procedures and use         of subsequent analysis. Most of the evidence regarding effectiveness of IPE in  actual  collaborative  practice is demonstrated from developed countries. While developing countries basically reported dy- namics of IPE and lack enough evidence in evaluating Inter-Professional Practice (IPP). This review is written in order to identify the global incidence of IPE and particularly that of the devel-   oping world. An attempt has been made to identify the gaps in available literature for its fields of prac-      tice or research techniques applied in IPE and the types of its domains that has been studied.

Objectives Public health research demands a collaborative approach in working with communities to combat expected challenges in the field. Therefore, to improve primary care services, a training programme on research methodology, focusing on the principles of inter-professional education (IPE), was introduced at Karachi Medical and Dental College. The objectives of this study were to assess the level of learning by participants in the domain of communication and to explore participants' opinions and evaluations of the training programme. Methods A total of 96 participants, including faculty members, medical students, social works students and health technicians in the research methodology course, were selected during March to September 2010. The study employed mixed method research in which communication competencies and participants' perceptions, as captured by course evaluations, were analysed, and findings were triangulated. Results The results showed that 87% of faculty enjoyed contributing to ‘inter-professional relationships’ and that ‘teamwork’ skills in community-focused areas improved among 90% of students. As many as 78% of students and 70% of faculty members identified ‘active listening’ and ‘communicating information to families’, respectively, as being learned to a lesser extent. These findings were defended by their deliberations on course evaluation. Conclusion Learning through inter-professional relationships was found to be most effective among faculty, whereas learning through teamwork was found to be most effective among students. Moreover, it was found that information was better communicated to families by students than by faculty staff.

Background and Objective: Identification of clinical characteristics and risk factors for mortality in COVID-19 is important for early detection and precise case management. The study aimed to describe the sociodemographic, clinical, and laboratory characteristics of in-hospital COVID-19 deaths in Almadinah Almonawarah city, Saudi Arabia, and to identify risk factors for early mortality among them. Methods: This is an analytical cross-sectional study. The main outcomes were demographic and clinical characteristics of COVID 19 patients who died from March till December 2020, during the hospital stay. We collected 193 records of COVID-19 patients, from two major hospitals in Al Madinah region, Saudi Arabia. Descriptive and inferential analysis were performed to identify and relate the factors of early death. Results: Out of the total deaths, 110 died during the first 14 days of admission (Early death group) and 83 died after 14 days of admission (Late death group). Early death group had a significantly higher percentages of old age patients (p=0.027) and males (72.7%). Comorbidities were found in 166 (86%) of cases. Multimorbidity were significantly higher in early deaths than in late deaths 74.5% (p=<0.001). Women had significantly higher mean values of CHA2SD2 comorbidity scores (3.28 versus 1.89 for men; p <0.001). Moreover, predictors of high comorbidity scores were older age (p=0.005), higher respiratory rate (p=0.035), and raised alanine transaminase (p=0.047). Conclusion: Old age, comorbid illness, and severe respiratory involvement were prevalent among COVID-19 deaths. Comorbidity scores were significantly higher in women. Comorbidity was found to be significantly more associated with early deaths. doi: https://doi.org/10.12669/pjms.39.3.6736 How to cite this: Surrati AMQ, Sobh E, Mansuri FA, Bokhari AA, Haroon SM, Alewi NM. Sociodemographic and clinical characteristics of early COVID-19 deaths in Almadinah Almonawarah, Saudi Arabia: An analytical cross-sectional study. Pak J Med Sci. 2023;39(3):704-709.  doi: https://doi.org/10.12669/pjms.39.3.6736 This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.