Objectives: To describe tobacco smoking habits, attitudes, second-hand smoke exposure, and training in cessation counseling at the University of Medicine Pharmacy, Sciences and Technology of Târgu-Mureș (UMPSTTM), as baseline data for the first Romanian university to implement a Smoke-Free University Project.
Methods: A cross-sectional survey was administered in 2014 among dental students at UMPSTTM to explore their smoking habits, attitudes toward smoking and tobacco control policies, exposure to second-hand smoke, interest in quitting, and their knowledge about cessation counseling. We used core questions of the Global Health Professions Student Survey (GHPSS) and added specific items related to the Smoke-Free University Project. Data were analyzed by SPSS v22 software. We compared our results with those of the GHPSS Survey.
Results: 581 dental students, 73.1% of the target population (n=795), completed the questionnaire. 38.7% were current smokers. Approximately 1 in 5 (22.6%) current smokers admitted smoking inside university buildings, although 80.7% were aware of the smoking ban. 44.2% of current smokers plan to quit smoking. Nearly half of the students (48.9%) were exposed to second-hand smoke in their current homes, 78.1% in public places and 33.3% inside the university buildings. Only 21.0% of all participants received any formal training on how to help future patients quit.
Conclusions: Tobacco use prevalence was higher among future dentists than in the majority of respondents to the GHPSS. Changes in dental school education are needed to promote personal smoking cessation, as well as to educate dentists on how to support their future patients quitting.
Tag Archives: training
Impact of a One Day Crisis Resource Management Training on the Work Satisfaction among Emergency Department Healthcare Staff
Objective: To evaluate the impact of a single day Crisis Resource Management (CRM) oriented team training, combining didactic and simulation sessions, on work satisfaction of the healthcare staff working in an Emergency Department.
Methods: Seventy health professionals with different qualifications, working in an emergency department, were enrolled in the study. After enrollment, participants were asked to complete a work satisfaction questionnaire and to choose a day for the training session according to their availability. Each training session took place in the simulation center and consisted of several elements: didactic session and simulation session, followed by instructor facilitated debriefing. The lecture was focused on medical errors and CRM principles. Two months after, they were asked to complete again the work satisfaction questionnaire.
Results: There were no significant improvements on the items evaluated through the work satisfaction questionnaire for none of the professional categories involved, except for ‘the possibility to refer the patient to a specialist whenever was considered necessary’ for the doctors. Improvements were seen for the same professional category on the following items: workload, leisure time, level of stress at work, time and energy spent on administrative tasks.
Conclusions: The findings of this study do not support the effectiveness of a single day CRM training as a tool to improve the work satisfaction among medical staff in ED. Further research is necessary.
The Effectiveness of Using Medical Students for Training High School Students in Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation
Introduction: Training for cardiopulmonary resuscitation is a very important topic for society, trainers and researchers. However it is not yet established who should be trained and by whom nor how the training programmes should be accomplished. We developed a study to evaluate an existing programme where medical students train high school students in cardiopulmonary resuscitation using instrumented mannequins to teach and collect performance data.
Method: The students of four randomly selected high school classes were trained by four randomly selected medical students and were evaluated by an independent evaluator. The level of knowledge provided and the level of technical skills acquired were analysed.
Results: One hour of lecturing was enough to increase the mean of correct answers from 39.52% to 78.48% when we tested knowledge. Testing for skills retention we found that that 92.75% of trained students taped the shoulder; 95.65% asked loudly “Are you all right?” at the right moment; 97.1% shouted for help at the right moment, the entire group remembered to check the breathing at the right moment, and 92.75% executed a correct head tilt chin lift manoeuvre; 86.9% remembered to call 112 at the right moment. Automatic recordings showed that mean flow fraction was 80.74%, mean no flow time was 18.9 seconds, mean frequency of chest compressions was 134.7/min and mean compression depth was 39.06 mm.
Conclusions: The results showed that high school students achieved a good level of knowledge and acceptable cardiopulmonary resuscitation skills when trained by medical students.
Study on the Activity of the Cardiac Arrest Teams from the Emergency Department of the Clinical Emergency County Hospital from Tîrgu Mureș, Romania, in 2009
Objective: To evaluate the activity of the Cardiac Arrest Team (CAT) from the Emergency Department, called to perform resuscitation for patients admitted in different departments of the Clinical County Hospital.
Methods: We conducted a prospective study between 01/01–12/31/2009. We included all the patients we performed CPR on, regardless of indication.
Results: We had a total of 110 cases, representing 0.28% of the 39,074 patients assisted by the department in 2009. We noticed an increased incidence of calls in internal medicine and surgery departments, with 50% and 17% of the cases respectively. The most frequent diagnosis was cardiac arrest for respiratory failure and malignant tumors, each representing 17%, even though malignancy does not have an indication for resuscitation. There was no causal relationship between the outcome of resuscitation and age groups (p = 0.552), type of wards (p = 0.36), or the Basic Life Support (BLS) performed by the staff, before the CAT arrived (p = 0.76). Medical staff from wards started BLS in 40.1% of cases, in 32% of these cases only chest compressions were performed, without ventilation.The proportion of resuscitated versus deceased cases is 49.1% to 50.9%, so immediate results are good, unfortunately the late outcome is bad, 52 cases out of the 54 died later in ICU, 2 patients being discharged in good condition.
Conclusions: CAT should be called according to Do Not resuscitate criteria. Medical staff from the wards should be trained to start CPR and have basic equipment. The early outcome is comparable with the international data, the poor late results binds to resuscitation without indication.