Doctors In Teaching Hospital Research Articles

Radiation Safety Knowledge and Practice Amongst Doctors in a Teaching Hospital in the Niger Delta Region of Nigeria

It is important that doctors of the various specialties in a health facility requesting for radiological examinations are knowledgeable about the effect of ionizing radiation. When referring doctors know the amount of radiation their patients receive there will be justification for such investigations in line with the guiding principle of radiation protection – As Low As Reasonably Achievable (ALARA) - to minimize risk to the patient. The objective of this study is to assess the knowledge and practice of radiation protection and safety amongst doctors in a Teaching Hospital in the Niger Delta, Nigeria. This is a cross-sectional descriptive study using a self-administered structured questionnaire among 131 doctors in Delta State University Teaching Hospital (DELSUTH), Oghara. Data was analyzed using the IBM SPSS v.21. Eighty-eight (67.2%) respondents had a good knowledge of radiation safety while 49 (37.4%) of respondents had a good practice of radiation protection and safety. There was an association between the department of respondents (p=0.009), awareness of body parts sensitive to radiation (p=0.005) and their knowledge of radiation safety. Also, there was an association between the department of respondents (p=0.016), their years of experience (p=0.016) and the practice of radiation safety. Knowledge of radiation safety was high while the practice of radiation protection and safety was low amongst respondents. Gender, department of doctor and awareness of body parts that are sensitive to radiation were associated with good knowledge; while department and years of experience was associated with good practice. It is recommended that doctors receive regular updates on radiation hazards, risks and protection in order to reduce the risk of exposure of patients and health workers to unnecessary ionizing radiation.

Awareness & Knowledge Regarding Research Skills among Post Graduate Emergency Medicine Doctors in Teaching Hospitals of Kolkata

In today’s world, all doctors are required to keep their medical knowledge and training up-to-date. Doctors should provide effective treatments based on the ‘best available evidence’. It is widely accepted that evidence-based medicine has contributed significantly to the practice of medicine and advancement of medical science. Every doctor should strive to contribute to the generation of evidence by conducting research. Objectives of the Study: To assess the awareness and knowledge of research skills among post graduate emergency medicine doctors in teaching hospitals of Kolkata and identify any further scope inculcating research skills of emergency medicine residents leading to contribution in health research. Methodology: It is a multicentre, prospective questionnaire survey among post graduate emergency medicine residents of teaching hospitals in Kolkata. The sample size was 100 done during period of 1 year. Discussion: 60.6% were more than 29 years of age and 32% among 26-28. 60% had prior experience of writing research paper and even then 96% wanted to participate in research methodology workshop. 99% knew that research improves outcomes in patient management and that they require continue guidance and supervision during their thesis projects. Only few were able to complete their research work on time. The major reasons cited for poor research activity in our study were inadequate facilities for research and lack of time. In institutional reasons, we found 54% had found inadequate support from mentors or assistants and 20% cited lack of research curriculum. 51% believe that active participation can be done by MCI/DNB and universities by allocating time for research and making it mandatory. Conclusion: The study population was male predominant and young with majority having the background of research knowledge. Most of the participants however agreed that research methodology workshop was needed to improve their knowledge and in fact should be made compulsory in post graduation courses. 97% felt that specific time should be allotted separately during curriculum planning for research. In conclusion research is the realized need among our study population. Steps should be taken for promotion of research among emergency medicine post graduate residents.

Pharmacovigilance: a study to evaluate knowledge, attitude, and practices of and impact of educational intervention among doctors in teaching hospital, in rural area of Jalna, India

Background: According to WHO Pharmacovigilance is “The science and activities which are related to the detection, assessment, understanding, and the prevention of adverse effects or any other drug-related problems.” A majority of India’s population prefers government hospitals when they are in need of health care facilities. The patients also prefer other available free health care facilities. Hence, these hospitals can be a good source for generating an adverse drug reactions database. However, the Herculean task is to foster a culture of reporting among the doctors, especially among the junior doctors, as they are more closely associated with the patient care, hence the present study to assess awareness of pharmacovigilance among the doctors and to evaluate the impact of an educational intervention for improving awareness of pharmacovigilance among doctors in an Indian tertiary care teaching hospital. Methods: A suitable self-administered knowledge, attitude, practice (KAP) survey questionnaire was designed, based on previous studies. An interventional educational activity was organized and the impact of the educational Intervention was evaluated by again administering the similar questionnaire. The statistical analysis was carried for comparing the pre- and post-intervention. Results : It was seen that the KAP of pharmacovigilance among doctors is low. The results also showed that there was an improvement after the educational intervention. Conclusions: The KAP of pharmacovigilance is low among doctors and educational intervention can improve it.

Knowledge about sepsis among training-grade doctors

Prescribing of antibiotics, often in the empirical setting, frequently falls on training-grade or junior doctors, who are often the least experienced in this. Indeed, improving the knowledge base of training-grade doctors or senior medical students through education has been identified as one of the key measures to improve antibiotic prescribing behaviour. We undertook two descriptive questionnaire- and interview-based surveys (1999 and 2003) of prescribing training-grade doctors in a teaching hospital in north-east Scotland to determine their knowledge level regarding various sepsis definitions, sources of local information used when prescribing an antimicrobial, and awareness of the cost difference between intravenous and oral antibiotics. A total of 55 junior doctors in a large teaching hospital participated in the survey in 1999 and 78 participated in 2003. Between the two audits, which were conducted 4 years apart, several initiatives were introduced to improve the education and support related to antibiotic prescription. There has been a significant improvement in doctors' knowledge regarding various sepsis definitions, whether the infection was hospital or community acquired, empirical choice, dose, route of administration and monitoring of the antibiotic, and options for drug hypersensitivity. More training-grade doctors (approximately 29%) used the desired locally derived sepsis protocol, which guides the prescriber through sepsis recognition. There was no significant improvement in the percentage of doctors who recognized that parenteral antimicrobials were more expensive (approximately 10-fold) than oral antimicrobials (63.7% in 1999, 64.2% in 2003). Overall, there was a significant improvement in doctors' understanding of sepsis and knowledge of the source of information that they utilized to select the antibiotic of choice, although the majority did not acknowledge the price difference between intravenous and oral forms of antibiotics.