Compassion fatigue amongst health care providers

To find out the frequency of compassion fatigue in health care providers in military hospitals. Cross sectional comparative study. Armed Forces Post Graduate Medical Institute [AFPGMI] CMH Rawalpindi, MH Rawalpindi and CMH Sialkot from December 2013 to July 2014. Two hundred and fifty four health care professional participated in the study. The participants included doctors, nurses and male nursing assistants. The instrument for collecting data consisted of [Professional Quality of Life Measure version 5] [Pro QOL-5] questionnaire. Data was analyzed by using IBM SPSS version 22. The alpha value was set at <0.05 for significance. There were 128 male and 126 female participants with mean age of 31.72 +/- 8.28 years. Reliability of the questionnaire was determined by Cronbach's alpha which was calculated to be 0.81. Seventy nine participants [31.1%] showed low compassion fatigue, 168 [66.1%] showed average compassion fatigue whereas only 7 participants [2.8%] showed high compassion fatigue scores. The difference in frequency of three compassion fatigue levels was significant [p-value < 0.001]. Compassion fatigue was significantly different amongst doctors, nurses and nursing assistants [p-value < 0.01]. Compassion fatigue is higher in doctors as compared to para medical staff irrespective of gender

Clinical audit on treatment of mucosal and multiple cutaneous leishmaniasis lesions with pentavalent systemic antimony

Cutaneous leishmaniasis is a parasitic disease spread by the female sandfly occurring throughout the Americas from Texas to Argentina, and in the Old World, particularly the Middle East and North Africa. The condition is diagnosed every year in travelers, immigrants, and military personnel. The treatment mainstay is pentavalent antimony [e.g., sodium stibogluconate]. Not all patients require treatment; many lesions heal spontaneously. The treatment is usually indicated in mucosal, mucocutaneous and multiple active cutaneous lesions. 30 patients of cutaneous leishmaniasis were included from the dermatology ward. The method of data collection was retrospective. The basis of proposal was local guidelines. The audit type was process. The standard set was "100% patients with mucosal and multiple cutaneous leishmaniasis lesions should be treated with pentavalent systemic antimonials"