Perception and attitudes of medical students toward communication, chronic disease and death.

Background: Medical students of today’s world found difficulty in communication when they faced with dying patients, how they would feel, what are their perception about caring of patients with chronic disease. These are often unspoken and neglected issues. Methods: It was a cross-sectional comparative questionnaire based survey of the 2nd year medical students and interns. Students were evaluated using a questionnaire consisting of 15 Likert type statements. Results: Completed questionnaire received from 89 out of 100 students. All students strongly agreed upon the commutation with patients. Interns (37.03%) were strongly disagreed (p=0.001) on not curing the patient is a failure of doctors. Interns (32.58%) were significantly more likely to be less worried (p<0.01) about death of the patient and to indicate cancer is a non-curable disease (p<0.001) when compared to 2nd MBBS. Students from both the groups distressed, while communicating with dying patients and relatives of dying patients. Conclusion: Perception of students regarding caring of chronically ill-patients and death related issues needs improvement. We believe that integrating different teaching strategies and training programs regarding this issue should begin at early stages of undergraduate medical curriculum.

Antibacterial Activity of Tridax procumbens with Special Reference to Nosocomial Pathogens.

Aims: To evaluate the aqueous as well as ethanolic extracts of Tridax procumbens L., (Asteraceae) against various bacterial pathogens including strains obtained from community acquired and nosocomial infections. Study design: Experimental study. Place and Duration of Study: Department of Microbiology and Department of Pharmacology, M.G.M. Medical College and M.G.M. New Bombay Hospital, Navi Mumbai, India, between July 2010 and December 2010. Methodology: After authentication of the plant, extracts were prepared from the leaves of T. procumbens using Soxhlet apparatus. Aqueous and ethanolic extracts were tested against some standard strains as well as clinical isolates of different bacteria by agar well diffusion technique. Nosocomial strains of Pseudomonas aeruginosa from different clinical samples were also tested. Results: While the aqueous extract had no antibacterial activity, the alcoholic extract showed significant antibacterial activity against Pseudomonas aeruginosa. The antibacterial activity of the ethanolic extract against the nosocomial strains of Pseudomonas was significantly more compared to that of antibiotics such as augmentin, cefotaxime, and ciprofloxacin. Conclusion: Narrow spectrum preparations like extracts of Tridax leaves may be useful for successful therapy against multidrug resistant pathogens like Pseudomonas aeruginosa.