Attitudes and self-care behavior of patients with type 2 diabetes attending the emergency department at Hamad general hospital

Diabetes is a public health problem and optimal glycemic control requires diligent daily self-management reduce morbidity and mortality associated with diabetes and its complications. By means of a carefully designed questionnaire, 215 patients with Type 2 diabetes who were admitted to the Emergency Department at Hamad General Hospital during the period from 1 May 2008 to 31 August 2008 were selected randomly and interviewed to determine their attitudes and behaviors influencing effective glycemic control and the extent to which they were helped by education and advice from care providers. The mean +/- SD of both the total diabetes attitudes with subscales, and the self-care behaviors were measured in addition to the mean +/- SD of both hemoglobin A1 c, and the number of admissions to the emergency department over the proceeding six months. Participants reported the highest performance following a specific diet which had the highest significant negative correlation [r=-0.1 81, p=0.009] with hemoglobin A1 c as compared with the other self-care behaviors. The study emphasized the importance of improving the attitude of Type-2 diabetics and their self-care behaviors because of the association with Emergency Department Admission and Glycemic Control. An appropriate educational approach and follow-up taking into account individual patient characteristics, needs to be implemented

Accidental digital injection of adrenaline from an auto-injector device

A 29 year old female colleague presented to the Emergency Department, of Hamad General Hospital, with an accidental injection of adrenaline into her right thumb from an auto-injector device. She received the injury whilst she was teaching her mother, an acute allergy sufferer, how to use the auto-injector. On arrival at the emergency department, her right thumb was pale, edematous and cold, so she was immediately given a local infiltration of 0.5% phentolamine mesylate [injected at the puncture site], a digital block with lidocine 1% and the thumb was wrapped with a trans-dermal nitroglycerin patch. One hour later the right thumb became pinkish, warm and the edema subsided. The patient was discharged home with outpatient follow-up

Use of the Internet by Sudanese doctors and medical students

Patterns of use of the Internet were investigated by a questionnaire survey of 102 hospital doctors and 123 medical students in Khartoum, Sudan, in January 2005. More doctors [84.3%] had used the Internet than had students [78.9%]. Half of consultants [55.0%] used the Internet daily, compared with only 18.2% of junior doctors. Many consultants and junior doctors rated their abilities as poor [60.0% and 53.1%]. One-third of students [33.3%] used the Internet only for personal and not for academic purposes. Barriers to greater use of the Internet by doctors included: time constraints [80.2%], poor skills [54.6%], no access to full texts of journal articles [53.4%], difficulty in verifying the quality of information [47.6%] and high costs [41.8%]. Students faced similar barriers but also listed poor knowledge of the English language

Deficiencies in medical prescriptions in a Sudanese hospital

We determined the quality of medical prescription in Ribat University Hospital, Khartoum through detecting errors in doctors' prescriptions. We randomly selected 1000 medical prescriptions and checked them for completeness and legibility. The total number of doctors responsible for writing the prescriptions was 46. The patient's full name was written on only 18.8% of prescriptions and that of the doctor on only 6.7%. In only 19.5% of prescriptions were drugs prescribed by their generic names, 59.7% lacked the quantity of the drug, 25.7% lacked the duration of treatment and 15.8% were difficult to read. The quality of drug prescriptions written by our hospital doctors is seriously deficient