A 3-D interactive microbiology laboratory via virtual reality for enhancing practical skills.

Virtual Reality (VR) laboratories are a new pedagogical approach to support psychomotor skills development in undergraduate programmes to achieve practical competency. VR laboratories are successfully used to carry out virtual experiments in science courses and for clinical skills training in professional courses. This paper describes the development and evaluation of a VR-based microbiology laboratory on Head-Mounted Display (HMD) for undergraduate students. Student and faculty perceptions and expectations were collected to incorporate into the laboratory design. An interactive 3-dimensional VR laboratory with a 360° view was developed simulating our physical laboratory setup. The laboratory environment was created using Unity with the (created) necessary assets and 3D models. The virtual laboratory was designed to replicate the physical laboratory environment as suggested by the students and faculty. In this VR laboratory, six microbiology experiments on Gram staining, bacterial streaking, bacterial motility, catalase test, oxidase test and biochemical tests were placed on the virtual platform. First-year biomedical science students were recruited to evaluate the VR laboratory. Students' perception of the virtual laboratory was positive and encouraging. About 70% of the students expressed they felt safe using the VR laboratory and that it was engaging. They felt that the VR laboratory provided an immersive learning experience. They appreciated that they could repeat each experiment multiple times without worrying about mistakes or mishaps. They could personalise their learning by concentrating on the specific experiments. Our in-house VR-based microbiology laboratory was later extended to other health professions programmes teaching microbiology.

Development, validation and evaluation of an online medication review tool (MedReview).

OBJECTIVES: To develop, validate and evaluate a computerized clinical decision support system (MedReview) that aids medication reviewers with pharmacological decision-making. METHODS: This study included three phases; the development phase included computerizing a consolidated medication review algorithm (MedReview), followed by validation and evaluation of MedReview and responding to a web-based survey designed using patient scenarios. Participants had to be 'fully registered' with the Malaysian Pharmacy Board and work full-time at a community pharmacy. RESULTS: MedReview was developed as a web app. It was validated among 100 community pharmacists from May-July 2021 using the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM). There was acceptable content validity and fair inter-rater agreement, and good convergent and discriminant validity. Exploratory factor analysis resulted in five domains to determine the attitude of pharmacists about using MedReview: perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness, intention to use, trust, and personal initiatives and characteristics; the total variance explained by five factors was 76.36%. The survey questionnaire had a high overall reliability value of 0.96. Evaluation of MedReview was based on mean scores of survey items. Of all items included in the survey, the highest mean score (out of 7) was achieved for 'I could use MedReview if it is meaningful/relevant to my daily tasks' (5.78 ± 1.10), followed by 'I could use MedReview if I feel confident that the data returned by MedReview is reliable' (5.77 ± 1.21), and 'I could use MedReview if it protects the privacy of its users' (5.73 ± 1.20). CONCLUSION: Community pharmacists generally had a positive attitude towards MedReview. They found that MedReview is trustworthy and they had the intention to use it when conducting medication reviews. The adaptation of the TAM in the survey instrument was reliable and internally valid.

Antifungal agents in preventing oral candidiasis in clinical oncology: A network meta-analysis.

OBJECTIVE: This review examined the comparative efficacy and safety of antifungal agents in preventing oral candidiasis among patients on cancer treatment. METHODS: We performed a systematic review and network meta-analysis based on randomised controlled trials that compared antifungal agents to placebo or other antifungal agents used in patients undergoing cancer treatment. Relative ranking of antifungal agents was evaluated with surface under the cumulative ranking (SUCRA) probability score. A total of 20 randomised controlled trials (3,215 participants) comparing 11 interventions were included. RESULTS: Compared with placebo, clotrimazole was ranked the best agent for preventing the incidence of oral candidiasis (risk ratio (RR), 0.21 [95% CI 0.08 to 0.55]; SUCRA = 0.89). Fluconazole was ranked the safest among other antifungal agents (SUCRA = 0.80), whereas clotrimazole (SUCRA = 0.36) and amphotericin B (SUCRA = 0.18) were ranked low for safety. Amphotericin B was associated with highest risk of adverse events (RR, 3.52 [95% CI 1.27 to 9.75]). CONCLUSION: Clotrimazole is the most effective in preventing oral candidiasis, whereas fluconazole has the most favourable risk-benefit profile in patients undergoing cancer treatment. However, we are unable to recommend clotrimazole as the best choice to prevent oral candidiasis due to unavailability of studies comparing clotrimazole with other antifungal agents.

Influences on Malaysian pharmacy students' career preferences.

OBJECTIVES: To identify and evaluate factors affecting the career preferences of fourth-year bachelor of pharmacy (BPharm) students in Malaysia in the presence of a 4-year period of mandatory government service. METHODS: A validated self-administered questionnaire was used in this cross-sectional study to collect data from final-year BPharm students enrolled at 3 government-funded universities and 1 private university in Malaysia. Both descriptive and inferential statistics were used for data analysis. RESULTS: Three hundred fourteen students responded (213 from public universities and 101 from the private university). Approximately 32% of public university students and 37% of private university students ranked their own interest in pharmacy as the reason for undertaking pharmacy degree studies; 40.4% of public and 19.8% of private university respondents stated that they would enter a nonpharmacy-related career upon graduation if given the choice. Public university students ranked hospital pharmacy as their choice of first career setting (4.39, p = 0.001), while private students ranked community pharmacy first (4.1, p = 0.002). On a scale of 1 to 5, salary received the highest mean score (3.9 and 4.0, p = 0.854) as the extrinsic factor most influencing their career choice. CONCLUSIONS: Final-year students at Malaysian public universities were most interested in hospital pharmacy practice as their first career step upon graduation, while private university students were most interested in community pharmacy. The top 3 extrinsic factors rated as significant in selecting a career destination were salary, benefits, and geographical location.