Background and Purpose
Although health science programs run parallel to each other and comprise of shared core subjects between the different disciplines, students of the different disciplines rarely mix or interact with each other during their undergraduate studies. Extracurricular activities are a big part of university students’ life, through which students have an opportunity to express themselves and enhance their soft skills in a safe and relaxed environment. Recently, King Saud University (KSU), Saudi Arabia, launched a multi-disciplinary event aimed at raising public’s awareness of their rights and responsibilities in the healthcare system. Although the event was designed to educate the public about their rights and responsibilities in the healthcare system, it has proven to be a good opportunity to promote interprofessional education among participating students. This study aims to review and assess the impact of this multi-disciplinary public awareness event on the acquisition of core interprofessional competencies by participating students from the health sciences using Kolb’s experiential learning theory as a framework.
Patients and Methods
This qualitative study used semi-structured Zoom interviews in Nov 2020 with health science students who participated in the event. The research team used a pre-designed topic guide based on Kolb’s experiential learning theory (KELT) for the interview questions. The interviews were recorded, transcribed, coded, and analysed using thematic analysis.
Results
Twenty-one students, representing four health science colleges at KSU participated in three focus groups. The main themes identified were participants’ attitudes towards the event, the types of knowledge and skills acquired from the event, and how they practically applied the knowledge acquired. These themes were aligned to KELT as this study’s framework.
Conclusion
The event covered the most important concepts of interprofessional education and could be a potential tool to educate students from multiple disciplines.
Oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC) is one of the most common oral cancers accounting for 96% of all head and neck cancers. Beside the different endogenous and environmental risk factors, epigenetics play an important role in causing OSCC. Epigenetics shed light on the presence of inherited changes in the phenotype of a gene with the absence of an alteration in the DNA sequence. The epigenetic modifications can result in the emersion of cancer, autoimmune diseases, aging and other diseases. Under several circumstances, DNA undergoes methylation. This methylation might be related to normal development or serious diseases like cancer. DNA methylation is a heritable biochemical modification occurs predominantly by transferal of a methyl group to C-5 position of the cytosine ring (CpGs) which may cause epigenetic disturbances. This review aims toward investigating the genetics in literature to help in diagnosing OSCC with new modalities that are less invasive compared to histopathology. Studied genes including ECAD, DAPK, MGMT and P53 has different methylation frequencies in relation to OSCC which may be related to their significant role in early diagnosis and prognosis. Since genetics has a major role in OSCC, we searched most recently reported genes and technologies seeking early detection and treatment of OSCC results in a better prognosis and more conservative treatment.
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