Restrictions in face-to-face contact during the COVID-19 pandemic have necessitated the conversion to online teachinglearning activities. To assess relevant competencies of a Master's in Clinical Pharmacy student cohort, an online tele-objective structured clinical examination (OSCE) was developed and conducted using Microsoft Teams®. Afterward, a survey was conducted to determine the acceptance of tele-OSCE by students and faculty members. Students' performance was also compared to a previous cohort that underwent face-to-face OSCE. The majority of students generally agreed that tele-OSCE was operationally easy to undertake (94.0%) and did not deter their exam performance. The majority of faculty members also generally agreed that the online platform did not deter the assessment of students' performance and a minority disagreed on the ease of assessing counselling tasks or calculation work (13.0%). There was no statistically significant difference in students' overall scores between the tele-OSCE and the face-to-face cohort (p > 0.05). A thoughtfully planned tele-OSCE is a feasible method of examination that allows acceptable assessment of attained clinical competencies when social distancing measures are mandated. Stakeholders should look towards fortifying IT and online platform access to support optimal emergency remote teaching.
Thromboprophylaxis is the mainstay therapy for preventing thromboembolic events such as stroke in Atrial Fibrillation patients. Patients with moderate or high risk of stroke should receive warfarin as it has shown to be superior in clinical trials, with increase in relative reduction of stroke and similar incidence of bleeding compared to aspirin alone. A descriptive cross-sectional study was designed to assess common types and frequencies of PCIs in AF patients receiving thromboprohylaxis and use of thromboprophylactic agents in accordance to stroke risk stratification. Retrospective data was collected by reviewing medical record of hundred patients diagnosed with AF receiving thromboprophylaxis admitted in Serdang Hospital between January-December 2012. Patients were chosen using random sampling technique from PIS data base of the hospital with the help of random number table software. Pharmacist Workup of Drug Therapy (PWDT) form by the Ministry of Health, Government of Malaysia used for patient evaluation in all the hospitals of Malaysia was modified according to the research objectives of the study and was used as data collection tool. Out of 100 patients (n=56 %) were females while n = 44 (44 %) were males. The mean age for males was 60.93 years ± 7.64 and females was 62.84 ± 13.52 years. A total of 15% patients were not treated according to CPG recommendations regarding thromboprophylaxis. The mean CHA2DS2VASc score was (3.3,± 1.1) while mean SD HAS-BLED (bleeding risk) score was (1.37, ± 0.92). A total of 274 pharmaceutical care issues were identified. The most common pharmaceutical care issues were drug-drug interaction (n=143), noncompliance to treatment (n=31), drug-food interaction (n=16), non-compliance to dietary requirements (n=15) and lack of patient counselling (n=35).The study reported identification of varieties of PCIs in AF patients receiving thromboprophylaxis which supports the need of dedicated clinical pharmacist to work in collaboration with healthcare team and patients.
The global depression burden has remained a challenge throughout the pre- and post-pandemic era. The pandemic effect has led to the spiraling of mental disorders among young people who will be the next generation of leaders. This study aims to identify university students’ sociodemographic, psychosocial and academic backgrounds and performance associated with depression symptoms for the development of primary and secondary preventive strategies for mental health. A cross-sectional study was conducted using an online questionnaire distributed to 19 institutions in Malaysia offering a Bachelor of Pharmacy degree program. The self-rated Depression Anxiety Stress Scale (DASS-42) was used to assess depression symptoms. Pearson’s chi-square test and Fisher’s exact test were used to assess the investigated variables with depression symptoms. Independent T-test and one-way ANOVA were used to compare means of depression score across variables. Binary logistic regression was employed to examine the relationship between the investigated variables and depression symptoms. A total of 610 pharmacy students participated, of which 47% (n = 289/610) were having depression symptoms. Students who smoke nicotine and those who have separated parents, family history of mental illness, and poor academic performance were associated with depression symptoms (p < 0.05). Differences in geographical areas, race and religion also showed significant associations with depression symptoms. Parental marital status, poor academic performance, history of mental illness and comorbidities were statistically predicting depression symptoms (p < 0.05). Primary preventive strategies allowing students to harness healthy coping skills for stress, nicotine-free campaigns and a holistic curriculum are warranted. Secondary measures on mindfulness and compassion skills activities to benefit students who experienced early life crises are highly recommended. Enforcing these targeted strategies in collaboration with health and social sectors should be the primary agenda of universities to ensure their uptake.
Clinical pharmacy education (CPE) is an important element in the undergraduate pharmacy programmes as the pharmacy profession had changed from product-oriented to patient-oriented services. This study was designed to assess the experience and attitude of Malaysian undergraduate pharmacy students on clinical pharmacy education, to compare attitude score according to different demographic characteristics and experiences, and to identify preferred teaching and learning methods for CPE. This was a cross-sectional study conducted using an adopted and adapted questionnaire which was distributed via email. A total of 305 final year Bachelor of Pharmacy students from all universities offering pharmacy programme were recruited through convenient sampling and the mean (SD) age of the respondents was 23.03 (1.589) years. This study revealed that almost 50% of respondents started CPE in Year 3 of their study. The highest proportion of respondents spent 31- 50 contact hours per semester for clinical pharmacy courses and the biggest percentage of contact hours were spent in traditional lectures.
Objective This study aimed to evaluate the utilised doses of HF medications between genders among HF patients in local setting. Methods This study was conducted as retrospective study involving data collection from medical records of patients with documented HF in Hospital Serdang, Selangor. A total of 131 patients (74 males versus 57 females) were conveniently recruited from patients undergoing follow-ups at cardiology outpatient clinic, Hospital Serdang, Selangor with matched age, different ethnics, baseline and current EF and comorbidities. Utilised doses of HF medications were categorised as percentage of recommended doses or usual daily doses, which were 0%, <50%, ≥50% and ≥100%.Results No significant difference was observed in utilised doses of HF medications between genders in study population which proved that the utilised doses of HF medications were not influenced by gender differences. However, Malay and Indian were found to utilise higher MRA doses compared to Chinese and indigenous people (P < 0.05). This study also found that baseline (r = -0.386; P < 0.001) and current (r = -0.265; P < 0.01) ejection fraction were weakly and inversely correlated with MRA utilised doses.
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