Effectiveness of the virtual reality chemical disaster training program in emergency nurses: A quasi experimental study.

BACKGROUND: In Taiwan, 50 % of the chemical disasters in the last decade were industrial accidents. The leakage of industrial toxic chemical substances may cause significant environmental pollution and harms. Taiwan's chemical disaster education and training mainly rely on simulation, which is labor-intensive, time-consuming, and costly. Tabletop drills are often used to as a substitute for simulations. However, tabletop drills lack a realistic presence. The 360° virtual reality (VR) transforms knowledge of disaster preparedness into audio-visual and other sensory experiences and allows participants to be physically immersed in an environment. PURPOSE: This study examined effectiveness of a "360° VR chemical disaster training program" on disaster preparedness and self-efficacy in ER nurses. METHOD: This study used convenience sampling and quasi-experimental design with two-group repeated measures. Seventy-seven ER nurses were recruited with the experimental group (n = 32) receiving chemical disaster training through 360° VR and the control group (n = 35) receiving training through tabletop drills. Data were collected before, one week after and three weeks after the intervention. RESULT: Participants in the experimental group were significantly younger and less experienced in disaster management than those in the control group. There were no between-group differences in the participants' self-assessment of chemical disaster preparedness and self-efficacy before the intervention. The intervention group showed significantly higher self-assessment chemical disaster preparedness scores than the comparison group (p < .05) one week after the intervention. However, no significant differences were found three weeks after the intervention. CONCLUSION: This study found that both 360° VR and tabletop drills improved preparedness and self-efficacy in chemical disasters among ER nurses. VR could be used for disaster preparedness training for nurses without prior disaster response experiences/ drills, whereas tabletop drills were more suitable for nurses with prior experiences. Both methods may effectively promote nurses' learning effectiveness and self-efficacy in chemical disaster preparedness.

A Competition-Based Problem-Posing Approach for Nursing Training.

Conventional nursing teaching usually adopts one-way teaching approaches. As such, students cannot think deeply and engage in learning, which results in lower learning motivation and learning achievement. Several studies have indicated that problem-posing is a learning process that has students think about problems and actively construct knowledge, which helps their in-depth thinking and promotes their learning achievement. However, problem-posing is a task with a higher difficulty level; in particular, with insufficient learning motivation, it is not easy for students to pose in-depth questions. Therefore, the present study introduced competition to a problem-posing activity to facilitate students' motivation. This study adopted a quasi-experimental design and conducted an experiment in the unit of Care of Critically Ill Patients. The results showed that the proposed competition-based problem-posing mobile learning approach could significantly enhance students' learning achievement and learning motivation and would not cause an excessive cognitive load. Moreover, competition increased students' learning motivation, and fostered them to actively reflect on and revise their questions, thereby increasing their problem-posing quality and learning achievement. This study can serve as a reference for future clinical practice to enhance the quality and sustainability of apprenticeships.

A knowledge-based system to find over-the-counter medicines for self-medication.

This study developed a medicine query system based on Semantic Web and open data especially for self-medication users to search over-the-counter (OTC) medicines. Most existing medicine query systems are based on keyword searches. If users are uncertain about the exact search words, these query systems do not offer effective help. Furthermore, most systems provide inadequate explanations of symptoms and ailments for users to use with confidence. To remedy these issues, this study builds a knowledge base to enable inference-based searches and data mashup for integrating information from across the Web. Three components were identified: (1) building an ontology model to describe the relationships between ailments and symptoms; (2) upgrading medicinal product datasets to link them with the ontology model on a semantic level; and (3) developing a data mashup to integrate web resources to help users to find references. Furthermore, the aim was to develop a web-based application that utilizes inference mechanisms to provide users with tools for interactive manipulation. A pilot experiment for skin ailments was implemented to learn the problem-solving skills of the system. Finally, two experts utilized a content validity index to rate a four-dimension 15-item scale. The evaluation results show that experts found the proposed system excellent for content validity.

A study on the concentration and health risk of trihalomethanes in drinking water / 예방의학회지

This study was conducted as a nationwide survey in Korea to determine the THM (trihalomethane) concentration levels in the drinking water of 14 selected cities. The survey was undertaken in one city (Kwangju) during September and October of 1988 and 14 cities in January through February of 1988. The results were as follows: 1. The KMnO4 consumption was 10.6 mg/l - 11.6 mg/l in Pusan and Ulsan, exceeding the drinking water standard of 10 mg/l. Pusan, Inchon, Kwangju, Ulsan, Mokpo and Junju areas also exceeded the ammonia nitrate standard of 0.5 mg/l, Other tap waters surveyed were detected below the drinking water standards. 2. The THM concentrations of tap water measured in January and February of 1989 were detected in the range 1.20 microgram/l - 150.8 microgram/l. 3. In the comparative study of the THM concentration of tap water measured in the Kwangju area during September and October of 1988, the average THM concentration of 145.63 +/- 70.72 microgram/l showed a sifford increase compared to that of 23.8 +/- 8.31 microgram/l surveyed in January and February 1989. 4. The proportion of the four THM compounds found in tap water was bromoform, 47%; chloroform, 30%; chlordibromomethane, 13%; and dichlorobromomethane, 10%. 5. Since the results indicate that the concentration of bromoform was 2 - 10 times higher than that of chloroform measured in the seaside district of Pusan, Ulsan and Cheju Island, it is reasonable to assume that the raw water was somehow influenced by seawater. 6. The average lifetime cancer rate of the population exposed to chloroform measured in the surveyed areas was 17 cancer incidences per 1 million population. From the above results, the existence of THM in the distribution systems seems to be inevitable, since chlorine disinfection is performed in water treatment plants in our country. There seems to be a trend of increasing. THM concentrations due to the contamination of raw water. In order to establish any form of regulations, health risk assessment is an imminent subject.