ABSTRACT
Background: Globally there is a move to reorient the medical education to suit the needs of the developing nations. Medical Council of India has made it is mandatory that all faculty need to attend Basic course in Medical Education Technologies (MET) to improve teaching effectiveness. In spite of their efforts in this regard many of the faculty is still unaware of this initiative and those who have already attended the course are not effectively practicing it. This study aimed at assessing level of awareness and practice of medical education technologies among the teaching faculty.Methods: Data was collected from the faculty by personal interviews using a validated semi-structured questionnaire and analysed using SPSS.Results: 219 faculty members participated in the study working in 26 departments. Mean age of faculty was 40.98 (SD: 12.36). 57.1% of them were males and 42.9% were females. The level of awareness among study participants about learning process related medical education technologies ranged from 57% (for psychomotor domain) to 74% (for setting up of educational objectives). The awareness and practice of ‘teaching process’ and assessment process related medical education technologies remained low. No statistically significant association was obtained between awareness and practice of SLO, Microteaching, and MiniCEX.Conclusions: Majority of teachers remain untrained in the medical education technologies at the time of the study. Of the non-clinical compared to the clinical stream of teachers, greater proportion of teachers in non-clinical section have been trained. The awareness and practice of ‘medical education technologies’ remain low among the study participants.
ABSTRACT
Background: Dengue is one of the most rapidly spreading mosquito-borne viral diseases in the world. Aedes aegypti mosquito is the main vector of dengue and Chikungunya. Entomological surveillance on Aedes mosquito has been standardized on different indices like House index, Container index, Breteau index. Larval indices are important predictors of outbreaks and are valuable in taking preventive measures. The objectives of the present study was to study the trend of larval indices over four months in selected wards of Kaiparambu Panchayat, Thrissur, Kerala, India and to identify the major breeding sources.Methods: A series of surveys were conducted from May to August of 2017 in Kaiparambu Panchayat under the field practice area of Amala Institute of Medical Sciences Thrissur. Houses were selected serially from 4, 5 and 6 wards with roughly 120 houses being covered each month.Results: A total of 489 houses were surveyed over 4 months. Overall, positive containers (with larvae) were present in 375 of 4055 potential containers showing a calculated House index (HI) is 44.4%, Container index (CI) is 11.5% and the Breteau Index is 76.7%. All three indices increased from May to June, peaked in July and dropped by August. Plastic containers were the most common source of breeding.Conclusions: The indices indicate risk even in the pre-monsoon season and there is a marked rise during monsoon. Hence, control measures need to be adopted during the pre-monsoon season so as to reduce the impact of the impending outbreak.