ABSTRACT
INTRODUCTION: Despite the recognition of the importance of physician knowledge and physician-patient communication about the use of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM), few studies have explored this issue. Therefore, this study aims to assess physicians' knowledge and physician-patient communication regarding CAM. METHODS: A cross-sectional study was conducted among physicians working at governmental hospitals and primary healthcare centers in Madinah, Saudi Arabia. The data collection tool was a validated English language questionnaire distributed using social media platforms. The questionnaire included sections to assess physician knowledge and communication about CAM. RESULTS: Of the 373 completed questionnaires, around 151 (40.5%) of the respondents stated that they have a poor level of knowledge about CAM, and 272 (72.9%) need to gain additional knowledge to properly counsel patients on CAM. Medical journals were the main source of knowledge about CAM. There were 121 (32.4%) physicians who believed that <20% of their patients use some form of CAM, and 180 (48.3%) believed that <20% of their patients spontaneously reported their CAM use without prompting or direct questioning. Around 180 (48.3%) of physicians believed that they asked <20% of their patients about using CAM. Regarding barriers that limit communication with the patient about CAM, the highest percentage was insufficient knowledge about CAM (137, 36.7%). CONCLUSION: The study showed that a significant number of physicians lack the appropriate knowledge about CAM and most of them agreed to gain additional knowledge to properly counsel their patients. Further research is needed to evaluate physicians' knowledge about CAM using a more objective method.
ABSTRACT
Parking in heavily populated areas has been considered one of the main challenges in the transportation systems for the past two decades given the limited parking resources, especially in city centres. Drivers often waste long periods of time hunting for an empty parking spot, which causes congestion and consumes energy during the process. Thus, finding an optimal parking spot depends on several factors such as street traffic congestion, trip distance/time, the availability of a parking spot, the waiting time on the lot gate, and the parking fees. Designing a parking spot allocation algorithm that takes those factors into account is crucial for an efficient and high-availability parking service. We propose a smart routing and parking algorithm to allocate an optimal parking space given the aforementioned limiting factors. This algorithm supports choosing the appropriate travel route and parking lot while considering the real-time street traffic and candidate parking lots. A multi-objective function is introduced, with varying weights of the five factors to produce the optimal parking spot with the least congested route while achieving a balanced utilization for candidate parking lots and a balanced traffic distribution. A queueing model is also developed to investigate the availability rate in candidate parking lots while considering the arrival rate, departure rate, and the lot capacity. To evaluate the performance of the proposed algorithm, simulation scenarios have been performed for different cases of high and low traffic intensity rates. We have tested the algorithm on in-city parking facility in the city of Al Madinah as a case study. The results show that the proposed algorithm is effective in achieving a balanced utilization of the parking lots, reducing traffic congestion rates on all routes to candidate parking lots, and minimizing the driving time to the assigned parking spot. Additionally, the proposed algorithm outperforms the MADM algorithm in terms of the selected three metrics for the five periods.