RÉSUMÉ
Background: Medication errors are the leading cause of patient harm, injuries and even death in hospitalized patients. It endangers patient safety and also increases the cost of treatment leading to enhanced financial burden to the individuals and the community as well. The study was aimed to determine the pattern of occurrence of medication errors. Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted in 188 hospitalized patients in medical ward at a Zonal Hospital. Medication errors were identified and categorized by reviewing the cardex. The data were analyzed to determine the cause of medication errors including rates of harm to patients. The descriptive statistics frequency and percentage were calculated using Microsoft Excel 2007. The findings were presented as tables and graphs. Results: A total of 985 medication errors were found in 650 (38.3%) drugs prescribed in 177 (94.1%) patients. Approximately 72.9% of the errors reached the patients and 32.39% of the errors were harmful. The most common observed errors were administration errors (41.6%) followed by prescribing errors (36.5%), transcription errors (14.3%) and monitoring errors (7.5%). Omission of prescribing information (63.88%) and wrong dosing schedule (34%) were the most common type of prescribing and transcription errors respectively. Omission of dosages administration (57.32%) to patients was the most common types of administration error. All types of medication errors were highest in the alimentary tract and metabolism class of drugs (32.39%). Conclusions: Medication errors were associated with the majority of hospitalized patients signifying the requirement of immediate preventive strategies and policies to ensure patient safety.
RÉSUMÉ
Background: Morbidity resulting from various neurological illnesses is a common reason for seeking regular help from health care facilities. There is increased requirement of awareness about neurological, psychiatric, physical, and developmental disorders in the community. Present study was undertaken to assess the community awareness and perception of risk factors for neurodevelopmental disabilities in children.Methods: The study was conducted with an objective of finding out level of awareness of a group of young health professionals and parents regarding their perception of likely factors that contribute for the occurrence of neurodevelopmental disabilities. This was a cross sectional study with discussion between the participants of various groups by using the method of Focused Group Discussions. Perceived risk factors as emerged during the discussions were free-listed and categorized under Biological/Familial/Genetic factors, Environmental factors, Socio-cultural factors and Economic/ Financial factors.Results: Lack of prenatal care, prematurity, unaffordability of care, low birth weight, malnutrition, infections and lack of maternal education emerged as important risk factors for neuromorbidity as perceived by the participants. Participants also enumerated insufficient knowledge on preventable risk factors, lack of trained manpower and neglect of female children as important contributors to occurrence of developmental disabilities.Conclusions: It is of paramount importance to identify the community perception of the risk factors for developmental disability which gives us an estimate of awareness among people and caregivers. Interventions tailored to the needs based on the level of community awareness help us in better channelling of preventive programmes and strategies.
RÉSUMÉ
Recognition of childhood stroke is difficult. Newer diagnostic modalities like magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and magnetic resonance angiography (MRA) have made this task much easier. Head trauma usually causes hemorrhage. We are presenting seven cases of mild head injury presenting as ischamic stroke. Neuroimaging suggested infarct involving left basal ganglia and internal capsule in five and bilateral involvement in two cases. MRA done in three was normal.