Background and purpose - There is a lack of evidence to support the role of hip precautions in preventing dislocation following total hip arthroplasty (THA). We report an exploratory study which assesses recall, adherence, and the impact of precautions on activities of daily living in the first 6 weeks postoperatively. Patients and methods - We designed a new questionnaire based on the educatio...

Standard/universal precautions reduce the risk of transmission of bloodborne infections among patients and health care workers. This study was conducted to assess the awareness and knowledge of standard precautions among nurses in a university teaching hospital in Ajman, United Arab Emirates. All nurses working in the hospital were given a structured, self-administered, anonymous questionnaire:...

The World Health Organisation estimates there are approximately 3 million cases of needlestick injury (NSI) in healthcare workers (HCW) each year, with 90% of these occurring in developing countries 1 . Student nurses are thought to be at high risk of NSI due to poor technique, inexperience and poor use of universal precautions 2 . There has been little research into the incidence of NSI in Afr...

Universal grammar (UG) is a list of innate constraints that specify the set of grammars that can be learned by the child during primary language acquisition. UG of the human brain has been shaped by evolution. Evolution requires variation. Hence, we have to postulate and study variation of UG. We investigate evolutionary dynamics and language acquisition in the context of multiple UGs. We provi...

BACKGROUND There are few data on the rate of compliance with universal precautions among pediatricians. We hypothesized that compliance in pediatrics would be poor because of the intrinsic difficulties in performing invasive procedures in small subjects. DESIGN Prospective, observational study. SETTING Tertiary care children's hospital. STUDY PARTICIPANTS A convenience sample of pediatric...

BACKGROUND Universal precautions are not well understood or implemented by health care practitioners, though crucial in the prevention and transmission of blood-borne pathogens like HIV. OBJECTIVE To assess knowledge, awareness and compliance of universal precautions among health care workers at the University Hospital of the West Indies, Jamaica. METHODS A cross-sectional survey was conduc...

BACKGROUND Inconsistent compliance of health care workers with standard precautions has already been documented. The objective of this study was to develop a questionnaire to investigate the sociocognitive determinants of compliance with standard precautions based on the theory of planned behavior. METHODS To construct the Standard Precautions Questionnaire (SPQ), items were selected using a ...

Hospitals in the United States are under increasing pressure to perform active surveillance cultures for detection of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) and vancomycin-resistant enterococci (VRE) among newly admitted patients. Results of such cultures can then be used to direct contact precautions to prevent transmission of MRSA and VRE in the health care setting. However, using...

In Uganda, nurses do not always practice universal precautions unless they know the patients' HIV status. In our study, focused ethnography was used to explore the experiences of Ugandan nurses in the practice of universal precautions while caring for persons living with HIV. In-depth interviews were completed with 16 participants from a variety of units at a large teaching hospital in Uganda. ...

PURPOSE To examine the knowledge and practice, as well as factors influencing universal precautions practices amongst Nigerian House officers and Nurses. METHODS A Cross-sectional descriptive study. Sample selection was by stratified random sampling. Information was elicited using pretested, structured, self-administered questionnaire. Data were analyzed using EPI-info. RESULTS Most Doctors...