ABSTRACT
Background: Both magnitude and severity of disability in new leprosy patients measure indirectly the disease transmission in the community and rapidity of case detection. Various factors might be associated with the presence of impairment at registration. Aims: To find out the prevalence of both grade 1 and grade 2 disability among new leprosy patients along with association of some clinical and sociodemographic factors. Methods: A cross-sectional study was carried out in the Skin out patient department (OPD) of a Tertiary care hospital in West Bengal, which is situated in a highly endemic district of leprosy (prevalence was 6.5/10000, year 2007). About 244 new leprosy patients were interviewed and clinically examined during Aug'06-Jun'07. Data was analysed in percentages, χ2 test, Anova. Results: Proportion of disability was quite high among the studied new leprosy patients, 11.5% had grade-1 and 8.6% had grade-2. Disability was more among the patients with pure neuritic type of leprosy (<0.001), multibacillary leprosy (P=0.000), patients with delayed registration (P=0.000) and who were engaged as manual laborers (P=0.001). Feet were commonly involved site and nerve function impairment, both sensory and motor were the commonest nature of disability found in this study. Conclusion: To reduce new leprosy cases with grade-2 disability, early diagnosis of the leprosy patients and searching for grade-1 disability should be routine procedure in our health system, for which thorough neurological examination along with appropriate preventive measures is the need of the hour.
ABSTRACT
This descriptive, cross-sectional study was conducted to assess the knowledge of and attitudes towards medical ethics among undergraduate medical students. It also looked at whether there was any improvement with additional years of medical education. 340 medical students of a medical college in West Bengal were given a semi-structured questionnaire that included questions regarding their awareness of ethics, their attitudes towards various issues in clinical ethics, and their knowledge of the code of medical ethics of the West Bengal Medical Council. The responses of 322 students were analysed by simple descriptive statistics.
ABSTRACT
Background: Patients' satisfaction has now become the most important and measurable aspect for assessing the quality of patient care services. For improvement of performance of any health system there is a need to assess patients' satisfaction as often as possible. Objectives: 1) To assess the level of patients' satisfaction as well as dissatisfaction regarding the services provided in the outdoor and indoor of different departments of a tertiary care hospital. 2) To find out the relation of some socio-demographic variables and different departments with the level of satisfaction if any. Materials and Methods: Two predesigned pretested interview schedule (separate for outdoor and indoor) was developed covering certain domains of patients care. Overall satisfaction level was determined by using summated Likert's score. Results: For outdoor, a little excess of half of the patients were satisfied in doctor-patient communication(51.0%),consultation room(53.5%), and overall(59.9%).The unsatisfied area was waiting place and time(38.6%).In the Indoor, 58.6% patients were satisfied with admission procedure,53.2% for clinical care,57.1% for nursing care and 45.3% with food services and the areas where more patients were not satisfied were cleanliness(40.4%),comfort(20.2%) and food services.G&O patients were less satisfied both in indoor and outdoor. Satisfaction level significantly increased with increase in age (P<0.01),male patients (P<0.01),lower education(P<.05) and surgical patients(P<0.01). Conclusion: The level of patients' satisfaction showed deficiencies in different issues of hospital services, which should be given utmost importance by the hospital management authority for betterment.