Computer proficiency has become necessary in many areas of medicine, administration, clinical practices, research, as well as education. The need for greater competence in information and communication technologies (IST) by doctors and medical students is increasingly recognised. Objectives: This study was undertaken to determine the knowledge, attitude and practices on ICT in the medical students of a local university. Methods: A cross-sectional descriptive study was conducted among medical students (Years 1-5) from December 2005 to May 2006 in Universiti Putra Malaysia. A self-administered questionnaire was used to collect data. Descriptive statistics were used to obtain frequencies for allvariables studied. Results: There were 343 respondents aged 18-29 years old. The results showed 82.2% of the respondents (82.2%) were comfortable using computers after enteringmedical school and 89.2% believed that ICT and computers skills are important for doctors. About 81.3% of the respondents were aware of the role of ICT and computers in learning medicine, 90.4% had used presentation packages, and 83.4% used word processing and search engines as software tools. Conclusion: The findings of this study show that medical students are knowledgeable and do have skills in information technology (IT) and computers. They are also aware of the role of information technology (IT) and computers in medicine

Mobile phone distraction is a global issue in road safety perspective especially involving the pedestrians. A lot of research findings had suggested that the use of mobile phone increase the risk for pedestrians while crossing the road, but there have been very few studies that could explain the said threat in Malaysia’s situation. This study aims to identify the distracted pedestrian behaviour via the video recording method. More than 300 samples were observed as involved in mobile phone distractions while crossing the roads from a total of approximately 1,500 analysed samples. The study also found that the highest mode of distraction observed among pedestrians was the “handheld usage” (conversing) as compared to the “hands-free” and “application usage” modes. In addition, the distractions had significantly affected the time to cross and the observed road users who were involved in “application usage” took longer time to cross. These results provide a prevalence material that may be useful in the development of countermeasures.

Patients with Benign Prostatic Hyperplasia (BPH) commonly presents with lower urinary tract symptoms (LUTS), which can be of obstructive symptoms such as hesitancy, incomplete voiding, post void dribbling or of irritative symptoms such as urgency, frequency and nocturia. Various recent studies indicate that nocturia is a very important and bothersome lower urinary tract symptom especially among patients with Benign Prostatic Hyperplasia (BPH). The aim of the study was to determine the frequency of common urinary symptoms among patients with BPH in HUSM as well as to evaluate the extent of bothersomeness of each and every symptom to these patients. This study too was aimed at evaluating the success of TURP in resolving pre operative LUTS. This was a questionnaire-based survey using a validated ICSBPH model whereby patients with BPH were selected and quizzed personally by an investigator. A subset of patients who had undergone TURP was further questioned regarding their satisfaction with the procedure. When nocturia is defined as waking up at night once or more to pass urine, the prevalence of nocturia was about 90%, but only 1 in 6 patients considered this is a very serious symptom. Even if the definition was changed to waking up twice or more, the prevalence is still quite high at over 80%. Urgency was noted in half of the patients, but only a quarter of them consider it a serious problem. 1 in 5 patients experienced significant leak and almost all consider it serious. About one third of the studied population had to be catheterized due to urinary obstruction and interestingly only about half of them considered it as a very serious event. Overall, a great majority of these patients considered suffering from these urinary symptoms for the rest of their life as very devastating. This study concludes that although the prevalence of nocturia was high among BPH patients, but it was not considered serious by majority of them. In fact, LUTS in our BPH patients did not differ much from BPH patients elsewhere. On the whole, TURP resolved most of the LUTS effectively.
symptoms <1> ; Prostatic Hypertrophy, Benign ; Nycturia ; Benign ; Urinary Tract