Search

Introduction: Falls may result in injuries, prolonged hospitalization, increase in morbidity and mortality, incur cost to the individual and the healthcare system and increase potential litigation. Various hospital fall prevention programs such as Morse Fall Scale Assessment Tool have been implemented in the last decade; however most of the program had no sustained effects on falls reduction over extended period of time. Benchmarking from private hospitals showed patients fall increased by 27% in 2008 as compared to 2007 (MPC report, 2008). There were 25 cases of falls in 2008 at KPJ Seremban Specialist Hospital. The objective of this program is to comply with The Joint Commission’s National Patient Safety Goals 9, “reduce the risk of patient harm resulting from falls” and to formulate evidence based best clinical practice recommendations on assessment and prevention of falls in the hospital for all inpatients, outpatients, customers and staffs within hospital premises. Materials and Methods: Contributing factors were identified based on the retrospective analysis of falls from 1st.January 2008 to 30th September 2008. A fall risk assessment tool identified as KPJ FRAT (KPJ Fall Risk Assessment Tool) for inpatient was developed and various other strategies to reduce the risk of falls throughout the hospital premises were identified. Points of engagement for inpatient assessment using KPJ FRAT were on admission, transfer in or when there is a change in patients’ condition. A prospective descriptive study was done and data was collected from 1st January 2009 till 31st December 2009 through interview with patients, healthcare providers and review of adverse event reports and medical records. Results: No of inpatients during this study were 37058 and there were 13 falls. The post implementation data reflects for every 1000 inpatient days the fall rate decreased to 4.3 falls. Conclusion: The use of KPJ FRAT and Fall Prevention program implemented throughout KPJ SSH has reduced the incidence of falls significantly by 48%. This might be due to increase awareness among the staff, hospital wide policy to report all cases and the formation of patient safety committee to formulate policy and reinforce the implementation processes. Limitation of the study include under reporting and heavy workload. KEYWORDS: Risk, falls, inhospital

This investigation deals with the use of orange peel (OP) waste as adsorbent for removal of nitrate (NO3) from simulated wastewater. Orange peel prepared in two conditions dried at 60C° (OPD) and burning at 500 °C (OPB). The effect of pH: 2-10, contact time: 30- 180 min, sorbent weight: 0.5- 3.0 g were considered. The optimal pH value for NO3 adsorption was found to be 2.0 for both adsorbents. The equilibrium data were analyzed using Langmuir and Freundlich isotherm models. Freundlich model was found to fit the equilibrium data very well with high-correlation coefficient (R2). The adsorption kinetics was found to follow pseudo-second-order rate kinetic model, with a good correlation (R2 > 0.95 and 0.94) for the orange peel adsorbent at 500 °C (OPB) and at 60 °C (OPD), respectively. The results showed that the orange peel was found to be an attractive low cost adsorbent for the treatment of wastewater.

The problem with the identification of Malaysian scholarly journals lies in the lack of a current and complete listing of journals published in Malaysia. As a result, librarians are deprived of a tool that can be used for journal selection and identification of gaps in their serials collection. This study describes the audit carried out on scholarly journals, with the objectives (a) to trace and characterized scholarly journal titles published in Malaysia, and (b) to determine their visibility in international and national indexing databases. A total of 464 titles were traced and their yearly trends, publisher and publishing characteristics, bibliometrics and indexation in national, international and subject-based indexes were described.

This paper describes the growth of Open Access (OA) repositories and journals as reported by monitoring initiatives such as ROAR (Registry of Open Access Repositories), Open DOAR (Open Directory of Open Access Repositories), DOAJ (Directory of Open Access Journals), Directory of Web Ranking of World Repositories by the Cybermetrics Laboratory in Spain and published literature. The performance of Malaysian OA repositories and journals is highlighted. The strength of OA channels in increasing visibility and citations are evidenced by research findings. It is proposed that libraries champion OA initiatives by making university or institutional governance aware; encouraging institutional journal publishers to adopt OA platform; collaborating with research groups to jumpstart OA institutional initiatives and to embed OA awareness into user and researcher education programmes. By actively involved, libraries will be free of permission, licensing and archiving barriers usually imposed in traditional publishing situation.

This study examines the literature on library security and collection security to identify factors to be considered to develop a collection security management assessment instrument for university libraries. A "house" model was proposed consisting of five factors; collection security governance, operations and processes, people issues, physical and technical issues and the security culture in libraries. An assessment instrument listing items covering the five factors was pilot tested on 61 samples comprising chief librarians, deputy librarians, departmental, sectional heads and professional staff working in four university libraries in Nigeria. The level of security implementation is assessed on a scale of 1=not-implemented, 2=planning stage, 3=partial implementation, 4=close to completion, and 5=full implementation. The instrument was also tested for reliability. Reliability tests indicate that all five factors are reliable with Cronbach's alpha values between 0.7 and 0.9, indicating that the instrument can be used for wider distribution to explore and assess the level of collection security implementation in university libraries from a holistic perspective.

This exploratory study focuses on identifying the usage pattern of e-books especially on how, when, where and why undergraduates at the Faculty of Computer Science and Information Technology (FCSIT), University of Malaya (UM), Kuala Lumpur use or do not use the e-books service provided by the University of Malaya library. A total of 206 (82%) useable questionnaires form the basis of analysis. The results indicate even though the students are heavy users of the Internet, rate themselves as skilled in Internet use and have positive attitude towards the e-book service, the level of e-book use is still low (39%). The students become aware of the e-book service mainly while visiting the University of Malaya Library Website, or are referred to it by their lecturers, friends or the librarians. About 70% rate positively on the e-book service. Those who are users of e-books find e-books easy to use and their usages are mainly for writing assignment or project work. Most respondents prefer to use e-versions of textbooks and reference sources. Generally, both users and non-users of e-books prefer to use the printed version of textbooks especially if the text is continuously used. There are significant difference between the frequency of e-book use and gender; between past usage of e-book and preference for electronic textbooks and reference books. The possible factors which may be related to e-book use are categorized into 4 groups and presented in a model, which comprises the ICT competencies of the students, their cognitive makeup, the degree of user access to the e-books and the functional or use factors.

This paper describes the digital library of historical resources, a research project which involves building a testbed for the purpose of developing and testing new collaborative digital library functionality and presents an initial analysis of the digital library's public use on the web. The digital library is modeled to focus on serving secondary students information needs in conducting history projects. As such, in the implementation of the digital library, the use of online resources would be an integral part of history project based learning activities. Students should be enabled to access digital resources, create and publish their own documents in the digital library and share them with others. As a testbed system, the collaborative digital library known as CoreDev has demonstrated its capabilities in serving an educational community as has been reflected by the positive feedback on the functional requirements from 44 users. Over 75% of the respondents in the user survey considered themselves capable of using the digital library easily. The beta tester demographics (n = 105) indicate that the digital library is reaching its target communities.

Philology studies are often associated with traditional methods of teaching and learning. This study explores the possibility of e-learning adoption amongst Malay manuscripts learning community. The Soft System Methodology (SSM) is used to guide the investigation. SSM emphasises on understanding the problem situations faced by Malay manuscript learning community and expresses the situations in rich pictures. The manuscript learning community comprises lecturers, students and researchers in the field of philology. Data were gathered from interviews, focus group discussions and observations. Academy of Malay Studies, University of Malaya is the case study setting, focusing on lecturers who teach and students who enrol in a philology course as well as doctoral students researching on manuscript studies. The findings highlight problems faced by the various stakeholders and propose solutions in the form of a conceptual model for a collaborative electronic platform to improve teaching and learning as well as utilizing digitized manuscript surrogates held in a digital library of Malay manuscripts.

Presents the result of the calculated IS! equivalent Impact Factor, Relative Diffusion Factor (RDF), and Journal Diffusion Factor (JDF) for articles published in the Medical Journal of Malaysia (MJM) between the years 2004 and 2008 in both their synchronous and diachronous versions. The publication data are collected from MyAis (Malaysian Abstracting & Indexing system) while the citation data are collected from Google Scholar. The values of the synchronous JDF ranges from 0.057 - 0.14 while the diachronous JDF ranges from 0.46 - 1.98. The high diachronous JDF is explained by a relatively high number of different citing journals against the number of publications. This implies that the results of diachronous JDF is influenced by the numbers of publications and a good comparison may be one of which the subject of analysis have similar number of publications and citations period. The yearly values of the synchronous RDF vary in the range of 0.66 - 1.00 while diachronous RDF ranges from 0.62 - 0.88. The result shows that diachronous RDF is negatively correlated with the number of citations, resulting in a low RDF value for highly cited publication years. What this implies in practice is that the diffusion factors can be calculated for every additional year at any journal level of analysis. This study demonstrates that these indicators are valuable tools that help to show development of journals as it changes through time.

This study examines 462 papers on Nipah virus research published from 1999 to 2010, identifying the active authors, institutions and citations received. Data was extracted from SCI-Expanded database, (Web of Science) and analyzed using descriptive figures and tables. The results show the growth of publication is incremental up to 2010 even though the average citations received is decreasing. The ratio of authors to articles is 1330: 426. The active contributing countries are USA (41.0%), Australia (19.3%), Malaysia (16.0%), England (6.5%) and France (5.6%). The productive authors are mainly affiliated to the Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, USA and Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO) in Australia and University of Malaya Medical Centre, Malaysia. A total of 10572 citations were received and the ratio of articles to citation is 1: 24.8. Collaboration with the bigger laboratories in USA and Australia is contributive to the sustained growth of published literature and to access diverse expertise.

Explores the use of an assessment instrument based on a model named library information systems security assessment model (LISSAM) to assess the 155 status in special and public libraries in Malaysia. The study aims to determine the implementation status of technological and organizational components of the LISSAM model. An implementation index as well as a scoring tool is presented to assess the IS safeguarding measures in a library. Data used was based on questionnaires distributed to a total of 50 individuals who are responsible for the information systems (IS) or IT in the special and public libraries in Malaysia. Findings revealed that over 95% of libraries have high level of technological implementation but 54% were fair poorly on organizational measures, especially on lack of security procedures, administrative tools and awareness creation activities.

The paper reports on a study that ascertains the factors facilitating students to utilize digital libraries for educational purposes. The study investigates students ICT readiness, usage of online resources and information seeking behaviour of secondary school students with the specific goal of applying the results to the design of a collaborative digital library for school projects. The digital library has been conceived to support resource needs of these students as well provide the space for them to publish their school projects, which are currently submitted handwritten. The study uses the case study approach and an urban secondary school in Malaysia is chosen as the case school. Findings from a survey and focus group interviews indicate that the students are ready to collaboratively build the digital library resources as evidenced by students digital library readiness score of 31.4/40.

This paper examines the affordances that a collaborative digital library (CDL) can bring to bear on supporting information literacy practices in the digital information environment. It suggests that the digital library can contribute to student empowerment in information literacy practices while searching, using and collaboratively building the digital library resources. To illustrate this, the authors have been experimenting with the implementation of an integrated information literacy model based on Eisenberg and Berkowitz’ Big 6 Model and describes the CDL features in association with the information literacy dimensions in this model. The CDL focuses on the project-based learning approach to conduct students’ project, which supports specific information behaviors that underpin research and learning such as information seeking, browsing, encountering, foraging, sharing, gathering, filtering, and using. Findings regarding teachers’ reception of the digital library are encouraging as they feel the relevance of the digital library to the current requirement of the students’ project and its potential to entrench information and resource study skills through project-based learning.