Hakim Journal
Year:2011 | Volume:14 | Issue:3|Papers Count:12

Introduction: Nowadays, several indicators are used to evaluate scientific research outputs. The h index is one of the most common indices taken into account by many authorities to assess individuals and institutions, worldwide. In this study, the attitudes of medical sciences researchers towards significance of factors affecting the h index and citations were investigated.Methods: At the beginning of 2008, h-indices of all academic members of Iranian medical universities were screened based on the Scopus database. The attitudes of the faculty members who had an h index of one or more were investigated through a self-structured questionnaire in which increasing factors of the h index and paper citations was assessed. The data were analyzed using statistical methods.Results: The response rate was about 37%. The respondents' attitudes toward the items were not different between the the group whose h-index was more than 6 to the other group whose h-index was less than 6.They respondents believed that publishing in high Impact Factor journals, well-designed researches considering the methodology, and to be the 1st study of its subject in the country and the world, are the most important factors in achieving citations. They did not believe that publishing review articles, contributing internationally, and having frequent paper topics were important in gaining citations.Conclusion: It seems that our researchers were not aware of the importance of publishing review articles and also in Open Access journals to increase citation rates. Proper interventions should be conducted to correct this attitude in order to increase the country's and researchers' citations.

Introduction: Social factors have highly related with occurrence of diseases. In order to decrease health problems in societies, medicine should be equipped with socio-biological perspective toward health and disease. This study aimed to determine the relationship between social participation with stomach, breast and lymphoma cancers.Methods: In this cross-sectional study, 85 patients with stomach, breast and lymphoma cancers, older than 14 years, were recruited using classified probability sampling. Another 85 individuals were selected as control group. Data were collected using questionnaires and analyzed using discriminate analysis, canonical correlation, and logistic regression.Results: The results indicated that there was an average association between the set of social participation components with stomach, breast and lymphoma cancers. The social participation component had also significant relationships with the diseases. The component of willingness for gaining interests for the group had significant relationships with the studied diseases (OR=1.602, P<0.05). Also, the component of willingness into participation had significant relationship with breast cancer (OR=1.597, P<0.01).Conclusion: Based on the results of this study, social participation was a social determinant of affection by stomach, breast and lymphoma cancers. It is necessary to pay attention to social participation.

Introduction: Some scientists believe that the definition of Bio-psychosocial is not a comprehensive definition for humankind. They are willing to add the spirituality as a part of human being. This study aimed to assess the effectiveness of a spiritual group therapy among patients with opium using disorders in Tehran.Methods: This study was a clinical trial in which 61 opium users were selected using simple sampling from patient referred to the Iranian national center for addiction studies and two other private centers.Patients were divided into two equal intervention and control groups. The intervention group was treated by spiritual group therapy presented at Yale University, modified according to the Iranian/Islamic culture of the participants within eight sessions in eight weeks. Urine morphine test was done for each participant every week. The Beck depression test, Beck anxiety test and quality of life test (the short form Health survey SF36) were completed before, during and after the intervention.Results: The mean scores of the depression test (p>0.002), anxiety test (p>0.001), and the short form health survey SF 36 test (p>0.001) were improved in the intervention group after the intervention. Although urine morphine test showed a negative trend, the decline was not statistically significant (p<0.75).Conclusion: This package showed to be effective in many dimensions of psycho-somatic, social and spiritual health of opium users. Subsequent interventions with more modified packages may be more influential.

Introduction: At first conference of health promotion in Ottawa in 1986, rearrangement of health providing services, especially hospitals, was introduced as a main strategy in health promotion. Health promoting hospitals project had been also proposed by the World Health Organization a decade before.According to the project, hospitals should have health promoting and disease preventing activities. In Iran, preventive services have not been defined as hospitals tasks and most efforts in hospitals are for medical treatment and rehabilitation. The purpose of this study was to recognize various components of clinical preventive services in Taleghani hospital in Tehran.Methods: In this qualitative study, 20 professionals and experts were interviewed using purposive sampling. Data were analyzed using content analysis.Results: Main themes extracted from the interviews consisted of: 1) challenges and barriers of clinical preventive services, 2) role of clinic of prevention in hospitals, 3) human recourses, 4) information recourses, 5) insurance system, 6) receiving and perusing patients, and 7) educating personnel.Conclusion: Providing preventive services is a perspective of future hospitals. Important necessities for implementation of these services in our country are description of the service packages, designing necessary structures, and training human recourses in this field.

Introduction: Multiple Sclerosis is an inflammatory and demyelinating disease of central nervous system. It is the second most common cause of disability in young adults after trauma. Nowadays, Beta-Interferons are used as the best choice of disease modifying therapy in patients with relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis. There is a remarkable difference in the uses of these medications between developed and developing countries. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the rate and costs of treatment with Beta-Interferon in patients with MS in Fars Province.Methods: In a descriptive study, all patients who were registered in Shiraz multiple sclerosis society, and were treated with Beta-Interferon (confirmed by the MS Committee of Shiraz University of Medical Sciences) were recruited to the study.Results: A total of 1791 patients had received Beta-Interferon. The most and the least types of the medications used by the patients were Cinovex (28%) and Resigen (2.9), respectively. Many patients (No=587, 33.1%) used Iranian brand of interferon (Cinovex and Recigen) and 1185 patients (67.9%) used medications made in other countries. Prescription of Iranian brands of medications was considerably increased from 2006 to 2010. The annual costs of treatment with Beta-interferon were approximately 126 milliard Rials.Conclusion: A Majority of the MS patients used Beta-Interferon in Fars Province. In recent years, usage of Iranian brand of beta interferon has been largely increased. Despite this fact, more than half of Iranian patients received Beta-Interferons which were made in other countries. Annual cost of these medications was high (more than 126 milliard Rials) in Fars province.

Introduction: Media act as the most significant tool in dissemination of health news. The Health Ministry's guideline on public dissemination of results can be considered the first controlling policy in disseminating health news in the country. This study examines the level of awareness and perspectives of health journalists, researchers and health research managers on the aforementioned guideline.Methods: The study was conducted through both qualitative and quantitative methods. In the qualitative section, opinions of 23 individuals including researchers, health journalists and research centers' authorities were gathered through six in-depth interviews and four focus group discussions. The content of the interviews were analyzed through thematic analysis with Open code software. In the qualitative section, as a quick complementary study, the guideline's publicizing was reviewed by questioning the medical universities' public relations officers (41 universities) and researchers (24 individuals) whose research results had been disseminated in mass media in the past one month.Results: In the qualitative section, the guideline was examined for three domains of publicizing, content, and executive assurance. Most interviewees were unaware of the guideline. Concerning the content, not being comprehensive, and incompleteness of the guideline's items, lack of clarity of the items, absence of specification of target audiences, and lack of executive assurance were mentioned. In the quantitative section, 28 (71.8%) medical universities' public relations officers and 21 (87.5%) researchers were unaware of the guideline.Conclusion: The importance of public dissemination of health research and innovation findings grows accordingly with the increased production of science in the country. Implementing research governance and existence of compulsory guidelines seems necessary in this respect. The current guideline's content is defective, and this matter impedes its executive assurance. Therefore, we suggest revising it with the help of relevant stakeholders and experts (lawmakers, journalists, politicians, scientists, etc).

Introduction: In spite of providing prenatal diagnoses (PND) procedures for Thalassemia, 148 new patients were added to the Thalassemic population of Zahedan from 2002 to 2010. This study aimed at identifying the occurrence causes of newly arrived Thalassemic patients.Methods: This retrospective descriptive study was carried out on 148 couples whose Thalassemic children were born after establishment of the PND center at 2002. The required data were collected using interviews and hospital records of the patients.Results: The results indicated that 81.6% of the parents of major cases had not undergone pre-marriage Thalassemia screening test. Also, 70.2% of the couples were not aware of their minor Thalassemia before having a Thalassemic child. Moreover, 71% of parents who had been diagnosed with minor Thallasemia did not attend the PND center due to lack of knowledge, late gestational age, husband's unwillingness, and lack of awareness about the importance of the problem. In addition, from the referred couples in the first stage, 50% did not come to the centre for second stage of diagnosis (sampling of the fetus) due to religious beliefs, husband's unwillingness, and mothers' ignorance.Conclusion: The results showed that the most important causes of new occurrences of Thalassemia include couples' refraining from taking pre-marriage Thalassemia screening tests and lack of knowledge about being minor thalassemic. Therefore, appropriate programs may hopefully reduce the new cases.

Introduction: Mental health is an influencing factor in medical students' academic achievements and occupational performances. Mental health is affected by many factors. This study aimed to investigate the possible relationships between medical students' perceived self-efficacy, meta-cognition and critical thinking with their mental health.Methods: In this descriptive-explanatory study, 357 students (196 females and 161 males) were selected using multi-stage cluster sampling method from Mashhad University of Medical Sciences during the academic year of 2010-2011. The students completed the Sherer's General Self-efficacy Scale, Wells' Metacognitive Beliefs Inventory, California Critical Thinking Skills Scale, and Goldberger's General Mental Health Questionnaire. Data were analyzed using Pearson correlation coefficient and path analysis.Results: The data analysis showed that there were significant differences between the students' self -efficacy and mental health (r=-0.74, p>0.001), their metacognition and mental health (r=-0.56, p>0.001), and their critical thinking and mental health (r=-0.18, p>0.01). Path analysis indicated that the considered path model was fitted to the data (RSMEA=0.048, df=1, c2=1.80, GFI=1.00, AGFI=0.97). Direct paths from self-efficacy to the mental health (b=-0.52, Se=0.03), and meta-cognition (b=0.45, Se=0.06), critical thinking to the meta-cognition (b=0.29, Se=1.57) and metacognition to the mental health (b=-0.25, Se=0.02) were all statistically significant.Conclusion: The results indicated that medical students' self-efficacy, metacognition, and critical thinking were directly related to their mental health. The self-efficacy, by mediation of metacognition, indirectly affected mental health and had the greatest overall impact on mental health.