The purpose of the present study is to provide a critical review on the revolution of the "compliance" concepts from compliance to adherence, and adherence to concordance for both pharmacological and non-pharmacological therapies. A comprehensive literature search was performed using online databases from Library of University Putra Malaysia, and Pub Med based on the keywords. The present study showed that both quantitative and qualitative studies cannot be neglected in assessing adherence and its related problems. One of major findings from the present review is that "compliance" was no longer suitable for current treatments and it is important to define concepts of the terms used (adherence or concordance) correctly and clearly. The findings reflected that researchers placed greater value on medication adherence than non-pharmacological adherence. There were three general factors related to treatments adherence, namely socio-economic factor, treatments-related factor and disease-related factor. The findings showed that both qualitative and quantitative studies found consistent results for most of the factors, except for the experience of diseases symptoms. Both study design contribute important values to the adherence studies and future studies should incorporate both quantitative and qualitative studies to understand adherence in both pharmacological and non-pharmacological treatments.
The present study reports the performance of final year medical students from the Universiti Malaysia Sabah (UMS) in the end of the senior surgical posting examination (SSP) with the aim to demonstrate the medical students graduating from this newly established university are of good standing and of improving quality. A study on the outcome of the method of teaching conducted on this study was performed by measuring the students’ performance continuously and at the end of their posting. The present data analyses demonstrate that there have been improvements in the medical students’ performance between the last two batches of students graduating from UMS. However, the students appear to be weaker in their MCQs, demonstrating a decline in theoretical knowledge. The analyses also demonstrate that there is a poor positive correlation between theoretical knowledge, clinical skills and/or continuous assessments, demonstrating the importance of emphasis in these 3 areas amongst medical students. Further studies may be required to determine the reason for this poor correlation since these may lead to better understanding on how to improve the overall performance of future medical student. CONCLUSION: The present study demonstrates that UMS medical student appears to continue to improve in their SSP performance although there are concerns about the decline in theoretical knowledge.
Learning environment in the universities plays an important role in producing highly competent graduates especially in nursing profession. Thus, the most important as-pects are the teaching activities and as well as student – teacher interaction in daily environment in the university. To investigate the International Islamic University Malay-
sia (IIUM) nursing students experience towards their teachers and to identify the rela-tionship between teaching and students learning perception in their learning environ-ment. This study used quantitative method and utilized two out of five subscales in Dundee Ready Educational Environment Measurement (DREEM). The subscales used
were students’ perception of learning (SPoL) , students’ perception of teacher (SPoT)
and total items in these both subscales are 12 and 11 items, respectively. The ques-tionnaire results revealed that IIUM nursing students scored 28.54/48.00 in (SPoL) and
28.13/44.00 in (SPoT). Both findings showed the IIUM nursing students’ experience their teachers and the learning environment are moving in towards positive directions. The regression finding was 51% of the total variation in students’ perception of teacher score was explained by students’ perception of learning. Although the overall sub-scales (SPoL) score in the current study falls in the category of a more positive per-ception, 2 out of 12 items were poorly scored by the IIUM nursing students. The re-searcher strongly agrees that listening to the expression of students is an important consideration for an educational institution. The overall mean score for (SPoT) showed that the students perceived their teachers as moving in the right direction. In this pre-sent IIUM study, one item showed a mean score of less then 2.00. As a result, these two subscales most probably should reflect the same outcome such as in their aca-demic performance and experience greatly during their student life on campus. The arising issues from this DREEM study at IIUM embrace the need for the creation of supportive environment as well as designing and implementing interventions to remedy unsatisfactorily elements of the learning environment for more effective and successful teaching and learning to be realised.
Accidental injuries are one of the leading causes of morbidity and mortality
worldwide. Approximately 1.25 million lives are cut short because of road traffic
accident every year. As the incidences of emergencies is steadily increasing in recent
years, it is important to ensure that individuals are adequately trained to deal with such
events including university students. First aid is given to preserve life and minimize the
consequences of injury and illness until help is obtained from health care practitioners.
This study aimed to assess the level of knowledge, awareness and attitude related to
first aid among IIUM Kuantan campus students. (Copied from article).
Background: Peer assessment has been shown to complement both formative and summative evaluations in education and used in some medical programmes. The study was aimed to find correlation between group work peer assessment score and final examination mark among four batches of International Islamic University Malaysia (IIUM) first year MBBS students.
Method: A set of four questions was constructed and tested to assess students’ overall role in their group research project. The difference in distribution according to years was tested by using one-way ANOVA or Kruskal-Wallis, depending on the data distribution. Pearson correlation coefficient test was done to test the linear association between peer score and final examination mark. Partial correlation test was used to adjust the correlation for four academic years.
Results: From the analysed data of 502 students, there was moderate, significant positive correlation (0.366) between peer assessment score and the final examination mark (P < 0.001). Adjustment to the academic years resulted in correlation coefficient of 0.371.
Conclusion: The results provide an important insight on the influence of peers’ perception in predicting the medical student academic performance.
The Communication Skills Attitude Scale (CSAS) assesses medical students’ attitudes towards learning communication skills and had been widely utilised all over the world.
This questionnaire has 26 items framed within two subscales. This study aimed to examine the validity and reliability of the CSAS among medical students in Universiti Teknologi MARA (UiTM).
Methods: This was a cross sectional questionnaire validation study among 171 first year medical students from UiTM. The CSAS had undergone content and face validation, followed by psychometric analysis using principal component analysis to assess construct validity. Internal consistency was evaluated using Cronbach alpha.
Results: Factor analysis confirmed the original two-subscale structure of the CSAS (positive attitude scale, PAS and negative attitude scale, NAS). A total of 4 items were removed due to poor factor loading (1 item from PAS and 3 items from NAS). The final validated CSAS consisted of 22 items, 14 and 8 items for the PAS and NAS respectively. Cronbach alphas calculated were 0.862 for the PAS and 0.565 for the NAS.
Conclusion: This study produced a validated and reliable CSAS to measure the attitude of UiTM medical students towards learning communication skills. Given the low internal reliability of the NAS in this study, future studies should include translating and validating the CSAS into the Malay language to improve its psychometric properties. Future studies should also include medical students from the three major ethnic groups and other medical schools in Malaysia to improve the generalisability of the CSAS.
Minimal research has examined the recent exportation of medical curricula to international settings. Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, USA partnered with Perdana University Graduate School of Medicine in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia and implemented the same curriculum currently used at Johns Hopkins University to teach medical students at Perdana University. This study aimed to explore the perspectives of first-year medical students at Perdana University, focusing on issues of cultural dissonance during adaptation to a US curriculum.
In developing countries like Nepal medicines can be acquired from the chemist's without of a prescription which sometime may have many drawbacks due to intake of excessive drugs without a proper diagnosis. The primary objective of the study was to find out the pattern of self-medication practice among the preclinical medical students at Manipal College of Medical Sciences.
The prevalence of occupational stress among academician is increasing in developed and developing countries. The job is not only to teach, but also involve in doing research, publications, consultation and administrative work. This study aims to assess the prevalence of occupational stress among academic staff in a research university and to investigate the association and correlation between stress and job factors which are career development, research, teaching and interpersonal relationship. One research university in Malaysia was selected randomly. A cross-sectional study was conducted and the respondents were recruited by using a randomized stratified sampling method. A total of 380 self-administered and validated Depression, Anxiety and Stress Scale-21 (DASS-21) and Stress Sources Questionnaires (SSQ) were distributed among academic staff between March to May 2012. The statistical analyses used were χ2, independent–t test and Pearson Correlation. Response rate was 81.1%. Stress prevalence was 22.1%. All socio-demographic factors showed no association with stress except ethnic group. Teaching, research and career development had significant association with stress among academic staff (p<0.05). Overall result showed career development, that include university condition and required publications for promotion were the greatest source of stress among the academicians. Occupational stress showed positive linear relationship to career development, research and teaching. There was a fair positive relationship between occupational stress and career development, research and teaching. It is recommended to organize continuous stress assessment program to identify and evaluate the current level of stress at the university level. This data could be a foundation for implementing prevention and control measures to reduce stress in the workplace.
Keywords: academic staff, lecturer, occupational stress, research, teaching, career development, interpersonal relationship, research university, job stress
A literature review of 16 papers on occupational injury research in Malaysia published during a 13-year period from 2000-2013 was carried out. The objective of this review and article selection was based on relevance to the research theme and mention of areas for future research. Most of the publications have focused on descriptive epidemiology, management practices, worker's knowledge, attitude, training, and rehabilitation services. The transportation, agriculture and construction sectors were found to be the most hazardous sectors and would benefit the most from Occupational Safety & Health (OSH) research and interventions. There is a strong need to develop a national injury surveillance system and also a mechanism to ensure adherence to the Occupational Safety & Health Act(OSHA) 1994. Detailed description and identification of risk factors for occupational injury in the environment, including machinery and equipment used was generally lacking. Future research on occupational injury should focus on surveillance to determine the magnitude of occupational injuries, determination of risk factors, identifying costeffective interventions (such as enforcement of OSHA regulations), and assessment of rehabilitation services. Relevant government agencies, universities, corporate sector and occupational safety organizations need to play a proactive role in identifying priority areas and research capacity building. Funding for occupational injury should be commensurate with the magnitude of the problem.
With an increase in the advancement of digital imaging and computing power, computationally intelligent technologies are in high demand to be used in ophthalmology cure and treatment. In current research, Retina Image Analysis (RIA) is developed for optometrist at Eye Care Center in Management and Science University. This research aims to analyze the retina through vessel detection. The RIA assists in the analysis of the retinal images and specialists are served with various options like saving, processing and analyzing retinal images through its advanced interface layout. Additionally, RIA assists in the selection process of vessel segment; processing these vessels by calculating its diameter, standard deviation, length, and displaying detected vessel on the retina. The Agile Unified Process is adopted as the methodology in developing this research. To conclude, Retina Image Analysis might help the optometrist to get better understanding in analyzing the patient's retina. Finally, the Retina Image Analysis procedure is developed using MATLAB (R2011b). Promising results are attained that are comparable in the state of art.
Simulation-based medical education enables knowledge, skills and attitudes to be taught in a safe,
realistic manner. Flipped classroom teaching encourages self-learning. Emergency medicine exposes
students to diverse group of patients and physicians’ decision making. This study aims to determine
students’ perception on knowledge, skills and confidence after combined flipped classroom and
simulated teaching. Two cohorts of Semester 7 students Group 1 (n = 120) and Group 2 (n = 78)
completed a 5-point Likert scale questionnaire. Group 1 completed the questionnaire after a lapse
of six months while Group 2 at the end the posting. Responses from both cohorts were compared
using the Mann-Whitney U test. Of 198 (Groups 1 and 2) students, 91.41% (n = 181) felt the
simulated sessions helped better understand care of emergency patients. The sessions helped identify
knowledge gaps (89.90%; n = 178), improve knowledge and understanding of oxygen therapy devices
(85.35%; n = 169), and airway equipment (90.91%; n = 180). They prepared better for the flipped
classroom teaching than traditional sessions (80.81%; n = 160). They felt that their communication
skills (82.32%; n = 163) and confidence (63.64%; n = 126) improved. Significant differences noted
to questions (p = 0.006, p = 0.005, p = 0.041 respectively) targeting knowledge on oxygen therapy
devices, confidence, and identification of gaps in knowledge respectively. Combined simulation and
flipped classroom teaching was well received by students though this requires more preparation.
Introduction: The application of M-learning or mobile application (app) as a tool to disseminate occupational safety and health (OSH) information among students and staff in the university, to replace the use of conventional noticeboard was assessed in this study. Materials and Methods: Study was conducted between February to March 2016 and involved 124 respondents from health sciences program in Universiti Putra Malaysia. OSH information was incorporated into a mobile-app using online software and respondents were requested to use the app for fourteen days. A self-administered questionnaire was used to assess the level of knowledge, attitude and practice of respondents before and after using the app. Results: The mobile app has significantly increased the knowledge score among respondents (z = -7.331, p
Coaches are the people responsible for helping athletes work towards
achieving their full potential. The influence of coaches is associated with
positive impacts on athletes by enhancing their performance, character
development, athlete satisfaction and other various positive outcomes. In
order to develop successful athletes, coaches need to have a high level of
coaching efficacy. Many factors may affect coaching efficacy, such as
coaching education and experience, and it might play a part in the ability of
coaches in coaching their athletes. Hence, the purpose of this study is to
determine the impact of coaching experience and education on coaching
efficacy among Malaysian collegiate coaches. A total of 331 coaches for
SUKIPT 2016 were involved in this study. The Coaching Efficacy Scale
(CES) questionnaire was used to measure the coaches coaching efficacy.
Overall, Malaysian collegiate coaches showed that their level of coaching
efficacy was high for all subscales, namely character building (M=7.92,
SD=.83), technique (M=7.91, SD=.89), game strategy (M=7.80, SD=.93), and
motivation (M=7.79, SD=.83). Furthermore, study shows that there was a
medium positive correlation between coaching experience (r=.37, n=331,
p
Most studies done in the past on factors affecting academic performance did not touch on quality of life factor. Also, most studies only used correlation and regression analysis. Not many studies used classification analysis. Hence, this study aimed to classify students based on quality of life and academic performance. Students’ quality of life was measured by using WHOQOL-BREF questionnaire which consists of five quality of life domains namely physical health, psychological health, social relationship, environment and overall quality of life whereas the academic performances were represented by cumulative grade point average (CGPA). The selected sample for this study was 60 Universiti Teknologi MARA (UiTM) Perlis students from Bachelor of Science (Hons.) Management Mathematics program. This study applied support vector machine (SVM) method for classifying the students. The results for each quality of life domain showed that students with both low and high academic performance were classified into high academic performance class. The same result was obtained when all domains were combined. All models showed high accuracy which implied that the classification made by SVM were strongly correct. The findings of this study demonstrated that quality of life plays an important role in students’ academic performance.
The higher learning institution especially private college is growing day by day with the variation of
course especially for the culinary art students. Culinary Arts is one area in Technical Vocational
Education and Training (TVET) where students need to adapt the real-world working as a chef besides
fundamental subject matter knowledge, techniques and hands-on skills for cooking in order to survive
in the industry. The course syllabus of culinary art is patterned to provide a stage for students who want
to be a chef in the future. This study is looking forward to find the importance of internship in Kolej
Yayasan Pelajaran Johor towards culinary art students. The internship is gradually enhancing the
student knowledge, confidence level and performance which enable them to be more confident when
coming back from internship. This positive indication and feedback may affect towards students,
lecturers, private institutional itself and Ministry of Higher Education.
Psychological well-being among students began to received attention and be seen as an important aspect in the life of an individual who are in primary, secondary or higher education institution. The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between the three subfactors of perfectionism, three sub-factors in basic psychological needs and psychological well-being among university students. Methodology of the research is based on a survey among 468 university students using questionnaires of Scales of Psychological Well-Being (SPWB), Almost Perfect Scale Revised (APS-R) and Basic Psychological Needs Scale (BPNS). The subjects consisted of 468 undergraduate students in University Malaysia Sabah. Data were analysed by using IBM Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) version 21. The results showed a significant relationship between perfectionism, basic psychological needs and psychological well-being among university students. Implications and suggestions for future research are also discussed.
This research examined how managers in universities incorporate non-financial measures in their Learning Management Systems decision-making processes and particularly focused on the importance of the Human Capital perspective in LMS decision making processes. A mixed-methods approach to data collection was used involving both interviews and questionnaires. The qualitative data from the interviews were coded and analysed. A descriptive coding method using thematic analysis was used for the data coding. The qualitative data were analysed using an inductive approach where the categories of criteria and indicators were not determined before the interview. The participants in this research were five members of LMS decision-making teams at two different universities in Australia and 24 participants from different universities in Malaysia who were involved in LMS decision- making processes at their universities. The results of this research indicated that there was substantial support for using a multi-dimensional decision making model among IT decision makers at universities, particularly the Human Capital perspective and they believed that Human Capital measures are important and should be considered in a LMS decision making process.The research has both implications for theory and for practitioners where it contributes to the knowledge on LMS decision making in universities and IT decision making in general, and also in improving actual decision making practices.
Education is one of the most important aspects for every individual including people with visual impairments. Visually impaired students also have the right to a good educational opportunity to higher education. In this regard, this article explores the issues and challenges of visually impaired students in higher learning institution. This study uses a full qualitative approach, a case study in the Klang Valley. In-depth interviews were used in data collection involving 5 students with visual impairment: four males and one female. The findings showed that among the major issues faced by visually impaired students pursuing higher education in tertiary institution were self-esteem, financial and public stigma. In addition, visually impaired students also faced challenges in accessibility, peer-to-peer acceptance and difficulties in learning at the university. In conclusion, this study emphasises on issues and challenges often faced by students with visual impairments at higher learning institution so that appropriate supports and facilities can be effectively provided by the university.
The rapid urban expansion in East-Asian cities has increased the need for comfortable public spaces. This study presents field measurements and parametric simulations to evaluate the microclimatic characteristics in a university campus in the tropical climate of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The study attempts to identify the thermally uncomfortable areas and their physical and design characteristics while debating on the circumstances of enhancing the outdoor comfort conditions for the campus users. Simulations in Envi-met and IES-VE are used to investigate the current outdoor thermal conditions, using classic thermal metric indices. Findings show high levels of thermal discomfort in most of the studied spaces. As a result, suggestions to improve the design quality of outdoor areas optimizing their thermal comfort conditions are proposed. The study concludes that effective re-design of outdoor spaces in the tropics, through adequate attention to the significant impacts of shading and vegetation, can result in achieving outdoor spaces with high frequency of use and improved comfort level.