Background In ‘‘To Err is Human’’ released by the Institute of Medicine Committee on Quality of Health Care, it was emphasized that it is important to establish a safety culture in the hospitals and ensure that the patients are not inadvertently harmed by the errors. Hence, we developed and validated a questionnaire for assessing the perception of patient safety practices across the secondary and tertiary care facilities in India. Methods The scale was developed based on literature review and expert opinion. It consisted of 10 questions and response to these items were based on a 5-point Likert scale ranging from “strongly agree” to “strongly disagree”. All the analysis was performed using STATA version 14.2 software. Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) was run using principal components analysis with oblique Promax rotation, and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) using structural equation modelling with maximum likelihood estimation. Results The entire dataset was split into testing set to run EFA (with 692 participants) and validation set to run CFA (with 645 participants). In EFA, two factors were retained as they had eigenvalue more than one (4.76, 1.09) and the scree plot also showed that the slope flattens off after two factors. Factor loadings were generated using oblique promax rotation. Factor 1 consisted of seven items (Item 1, Item 2, Item 3, Item 4, Item 5, Item 6, Item 7 – questions related to patient-doctor communication, hospital environment and procedures) accounting for 47.6% of variance, and Factor 2 had three items (Item 8, Item 9, Item 10 – infection prevention and control practices in hospital) explaining 10.9% of the variance. Thus, together the two factors explained 58.5% of the variance. CFA revealed good confirmatory fit indices of 0.85, standardized root mean square residual of 0.07 and acceptable Tucker-Lewis Index of 0.80. The reliability coefficient was 0.88 indicating very good internal consistency. Conclusion This study develops and validates a scale that can be used universally for assessing the patients’ perception on hospital safety practices across secondary and tertiary care facilities in India.

Introduction Non-pharmacological management of tobacco cessation has been reported to yield a high level of abstinence from tobacco usage. However, it is unclear which type of non-pharmacological intervention to be adopted in national tobacco control program. Hence, we undertook this review to identify the best non-pharmacological tobacco cessation therapies for tobacco cessation. Methods Systematic literature search was performed in EMBASE, SCOPUS, PubMed Central, CENTRAL, MEDLINE, Google Scholar, ScienceDirect and Clinicaltrials.gov from 1964 until September 2022. Randomized controlled trials assessing the effectiveness of non-pharmacological intervention for tobacco cessation in India were eligible for inclusion. Comparative intervention effect estimates obtained from network meta-analyses were represented as pooled odds ratio (OR) with 95% confidence interval (CI). Results 21 studies were eligible for the analysis. More than half of the studies had high risk of bias. E-Health intervention had the highest odds ratio (pooled OR=9.90; 95%CI: 2.01-48.86) in terms of tobacco cessation rate followed by group counselling (pooled OR=3.61; 95%CI: 1.48-8.78) and individual counselling (pooled OR=3.43; 95%CI: 1.43 to 8.25). Brief advice or self-help intervention or comparison between each of these interventions against each other (both direct and indirect network) did not yield any significant results. Conclusion E-Health intervention was the best intervention followed by group intervention and individual face-to-face counselling intervention for tobacco cessation in India. Nonetheless, more high-quality large scale RCTs either individual or by combining the e-Health, individual or group counselling interventions are required to provide conclusive evidence and subsequent adoption into the national health programs in India. Implications of the study This study would aid the policymakers, clinicians and public health researchers in choosing the right tobacco cessation therapy to be offered across various levels of the healthcare delivery system, including major health facilities providing drug therapy (i.e., concurrently with pharmacological treatment for tobacco cessation) in India. The study findings can be adopted by the national tobacco control program to decide the appropriate intervention package and identify the areas of focus to perform tobacco-related research in the country.

Background: According to WHO statistics, close to 3 million deaths occur every year due to harmful use of   alcohol of which 3.2 lakh people are aged between 15-29 years. College students are more prone to experimenting and risk taking behavior. Keeping this in mind, our study was aimed to assess the alcohol use patterns and factors associated with alcohol consumption among college students. Methodology: A cross-sectional study was conducted including college students from various streams in the South Indian states of Kerala and Tamil Nadu.  Data was collected from 1129 participants using a self-administered questionnaire consisting of 4 sections including socio-demographic details, alcohol use patterns, attitude towards alcohol consumption and media exposure. Results: Prevalence of alcohol consumption in the sample population was found to be 31% (348). Among the 348, 30.2% (105) reported that one of the reasons for the consumption of the first drink of alcohol was peer-pressure. Higher prevalence of alcohol consumption seen among the groups with higher media exposure and higher tolerance to alcohol advertising was found to be statistically significant. The study statistics show that 600(53.14%) participants were exposed to actors consuming alcohol in media more than 10 times in the past 30 days while only 320(28.34%) reported seeing warnings or health education material in the same duration. Conclusion: Considering the above findings, it is high time policy makers focused on using media for health promotion and health education, since it is proving to have the potential to influence the decisions and lifestyles of the future generations.