Knowledge, attitudes, and perceptions related to telemedicine among young doctors and nursing staff at the King Abdul-Aziz University Hospital Jeddah, KSA.

OBJECTIVE: To investigate the knowledge, perceptions, and attitude of young doctors and nurses at Kind Abdulaziz University Hospital (KAUH) Jeddah, KSA, regarding the effectiveness of telemedicine in dealing with the patients for either follow-up or continuous monitoring of chronic diseases. MATERIAL AND METHODS: This prospective cross-sectional study was carried out on the young doctors and nursing staff at KAUH. An online questionnaire addressing all the required fields, i.e., background essential demography, perceptions, acceptance, and knowledge regarding telemedicine's utility, was sent to the targeted population of health care workers. Completed responses were analyzed statistically as per study objectives. RESULTS: The response rate in our study was 85%. A total of 335 participants responded to our questionnaire. One hundred seventy-one (51.1%) were doctors, whereas one hundred sixty-four (48.9%) were the nursing staff. Among doctors, 50 (29.4%) were recent graduates, whereas, in the nursing side, 77 (46.7%) were the senior nursing students. The knowledge and attitude of the young nursing staff were relatively better than the senior staff taking part in the study and the trends were found statistically significant. CONCLUSION: Our study participants, being young, were enthusiastic, had good knowledge regarding the advantages and limitations of telemedicine in managing the selected groups of patients. Their perception and attitude were quite positive. This is an encouraging trend in the promotion of telemedicine as an established way of managing patients with special requirements in an effective way. The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the importance of telemedicine in emergencies to protect both patients and health care workers by reducing chronic patients' avoidable hospital visits.

Adhesion performance of UHMWPE after different surface modification techniques.

A novel design of an ultra-high molecular weight polyethylene (UHMWPE) glenoid component has been proposed, based on adhesion to PMMA bone cement. However, due to the non-polar nature of UHMWPE, surface modification techniques are needed to obtain good adhesion and thus for the design to be viable. The aim of the study is to investigate adhesion of UHMWPE after different surface treatments. Three gas-phase surface modification techniques were investigated, namely UV/Ozone, corona discharge and radio frequency glow discharge plasma, as well as abrasion. The surface treated samples were examined using water contact angle, surface energy and roughness measurements, as well as single lap-joint shear testing using polymethylmethacrylate (PMMA) bone cement and methylmethacrylate (MMA) adhesive. The effect of aging on bonded samples has also been investigated. Corona and glow discharge treatments were found to activate the surface as shown by an increase in surface energy of over 100% in an order of less than a minute, corresponding to an increase in ultimate shear stress from 0.12 to 0.40 MPa. In contrast, UV/Ozone required exposure times in the order of minutes to have an effect that was still incomparable to the other gas-phase treatments examined. Abrasion produced slightly better adhesion properties for single lap-joints bonded with PMMA compared to the corona treatment. The best treatment was found to be a combined treatment of surface roughening for 10 s, and subsequently a 90 s glow discharge treatment, resulting in failure of the UHMWPE sheet material.