In a prospective descriptive laboratory study, 25 Helping Hand(™) (HH) (10 without and 15 with reminder system) and 50 Medication Event Monitoring Systems (MEMS) (25 with 18-month and 25 with 2-year battery life) were manipulated twice daily following a predefined protocol during 3 consecutive weeks. Accuracy was determined using the fixed manipulation scheme as the reference. Perfect functioni...

A disparity exists in the educational qualifications of dental assistants working in various public and private institutions in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. The aim of this study was to assess the influence of professional and personal characteristics on job satisfaction among dental assistants. A cross-sectional survey was performed among dental assistants using a 24-item self-administered questionna...

Because of its role in human disease, there are increasing global requirements for reliable diagnostic and control methods for Trichinella in food animals to ensure meat safety and to facilitate trade. Consequently, there is a need for standardization of methods, programs, and best practices used in the control of Trichinella and trichinellosis. This review article describes the biology and epi...

IMPORTANCE The Medical Student Performance Evaluation (MSPE)--formerly called the dean's letter--is an important tool for residency program directors to use in assessing student qualifications for both invitation to interview and construction of their rank order list. Many institutions are now allowing students to construct their own Unique Characteristics (UC) section for the MSPE. This study ...

BACKGROUND A comprehensive care and treatment program requires a well functioning laboratory services. We assessed satisfaction of medical personnel to the laboratory services to guide process of quality improvement of the services. METHODOLOGY A cross-sectional survey in 24 randomly selected health facilities in Mainland Tanzania was conducted to assess the satisfaction of the medical person...

F or decades anatomical pathologists have established and managed diagnostic immunohistochemistry (IHC) laboratories to assist in accurate tissue diagnosis. Although test validation, quality control (QC), and quality assurance (QA) procedures have always been a part of routine operations, test results were always viewed in the context of clinical, morphological, and other IHC test results. Howe...

BACKGROUND Leptospirosis is a widespread but underreported cause of morbidity and mortality. It has rarely been reported in either humans or animals in Madagascar. METHODS We conducted a cross-sectional survey of the inhabitants in Moramanga, Madagascar, in June 2011, to estimate the prevalence of human infection using the microscopic agglutination test (MAT). This activity was carried out as...

BACKGROUND Appropriate antimicrobial prescribing is essential for patient care, yet up to half of antimicrobial prescriptions written in the UK are sub-optimal. Improving prescriber education has recently been promoted as a mechanism to optimise antimicrobial use, but identification of key learning objectives to facilitate this is so far lacking. Using qualitative methods we investigated junior...

methamphetamine (ma) is a highly addictive psychostimulant drug with crucial impacts on individuals on various levels. exposure to methamphetamine-associated cues in laboratory can elicit measureable craving and autonomic reactivity in most individuals with methamphetamine dependence and the cue reactivity can model how craving would result in continued drug seeking behaviors and relapse in rea...

BACKGROUND This study aimed to characterise the factors relating to participation in a postal follow-up study in Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal individuals, given the need to quantify potential biases from loss to follow-up and the lack of evidence regarding postal surveys among Aboriginal people. METHODS The first 100,000 participants from the Sax Institute's 45 and Up Study, a large scale co...