Browsing by Author "Wijesinghe, T."

Now showing 1 - 3 of 3

Assessment of knowledge and attitude towards the palliative care among nurses in Sri Lanka: A hospital- based study.
(Sage Publishing, 2023) Wijesinghe, T.; Gunathilaka, N.; Mendis, S.; Udayanga, L.
OBJECTIVE: Palliative care is an intervention that improves the quality of life of patients. Nurses have a primary role in providing palliative care. Their knowledge and attitudes toward palliative care is important in care delivery. There is minimal information in Sri Lanka to document the knowledge and attitude of palliative care among nurses. Therefore, the present study was conducted to assess the knowledge and attitude of palliative care among nurses in Sri Lanka. METHOD: A cross-sectional, descriptive study was conducted on 200 selected nurses at Colombo North Teaching Hospital, Sri Lanka fulfilling the inclusion criteria. Socio-demographic information of the study participants was obtained through a self-administered questionnaire. The awareness and attitude levels toward the PC were assessed using the Palliative Care Knowledge Test (PCKT) and Frommelt Attitude Toward Care of the Dying, respectively. RESULTS: More than half of the participants (55%) had an inadequate knowledge level regarding the palliative care (<50% for the PCKT score). Regarding the attitude on the palliative care, the majority stated nursing care to a dying person is a worthwhile experience (92%; n = 184). Many of them disagreed with avoiding the care of dying patients (strongly disagree: 37%; n = 74, disagree: 52.5%; n = 105). Overall, 85.5% of study participants had a positive attitude towards the palliative care. According to binary logistic regression, gender (P = .04; OR = 3.57; CI = 1.03-12.41) and working setup (P < .001) were significantly associated with having a positive attitude. The knowledge level was higher among nurses working in surgical wards (OR = 7.84). Those with >10 years of experience were statistically significant to have a positive attitude (P = .02; OR = 1.35; CI = 1.13-5.50). CONCLUSION: The nurses had inadequate knowledge of the PC even though they had a positive attitude toward it. Therefore, it is essential to uplift the awareness level among health workers. This warrants the need for palliative care education in the nursing curriculum and continuous professional development.
Developing a Narrative Assessment Tool for Sinhala Speaking Children through Cross-cultural Collaboration: The Process and the Product
(University of Kelaniya, 2012) Wijesinghe, T.; Perera, I.; Shadden, B.
Background: The lack of standardized assessment protocols for the Sinhala and Tamil languages used in assessing clients with communication disorders poses a challenge to speech and language therapists working in Sri Lanka. Assessments are carried out by translating the norms of English and its standardized assessments into Sinhala and Tamil. The language specifics of Sinhala and Tamil are not addressed in these translated assessments. This presents questions regarding best practice in the health service provision for people with communication difficulties in Sri Lanka. Aim: To describe the process of an international, cross-cultural collaboration in translating American narrative discourse assessment procedures used for pediatric and adult populations, into the development of a tool for children aged 6-10 years speaking Sinhala. Methods: The participants were 10 Sinhala speaking children of 6-10 years living in Sri Lanka. Two assessment tools were developed and administered. The first tool was a story re-telling task (spoken and written). The second tool was a story generating task (spoken and written). Record sheets were developed and audio and video recordings were obtained. Results: The child narratives displayed age appropriate aspects of story grammar and true narrative skill level in the story re-telling task. Contradictory results were obtained in information analysis of story generating task. The influence of culture and the Sinhala language was seen with respect to diglossia and in analysis of 3rd person pronoun cohesive ties. Conclusions: The implementation of the pilot study within the Sri Lankan context was invaluable in fine tuning of the tool to be linguistically and culturally appropriate. More collaboration with Sri Lankan educators and speech and language pathologists will make the assessment tool appropriate for use. The tool will be invaluable in the early identification of spoken and written narrative skill difficulties among primary school children in Sri Lanka.
REACh for the preschoolers; a developmental assessment tool for 2-5 year old children in Sri Lanka
(BioMed Central, 2023) Caldera, A.V.; Wickremasinghe, A.R.; Muttiah, N.; Godamunne, P.K.S.; Jayasena, B.N.; Chathurika, L.K.E.; Perera, K.M.N.; Mendis, M.; Tilakarathne, D.; Peiris, M.K.R.R.; Wijesinghe, T.; Senarathna, N.E.; Saubhagya, W.D.L.; Chandraratne, M.; Sumanasena, S.P.
BACKGROUND: Preschool children in low resource settings are at higher risk of missing developmental potential due to the lack of standardized and validated methods for the timely detection of children with developmental delays or neurodevelopmental disorders. The preschool teacher is a non-specialist resourceful link within the community to detect and offer interventions early. This paper discusses the preliminary iteration of designing and testing the psychometric properties of a developmental assessment for children aged 24 to 60 months in Sri Lanka. This assessment is designed to be conducted by preschool teachers in their preschool setting. METHODS: Three processes followed: 1. Designing and development of the Ragama Early Assessment for Children (REACh) complete preschool developmental assessment and a tool kit 2. Testing and training teachers on conducting the REACh assessment 3. Preliminary assessment of the psychometric properties including content validity, internal consistency, interrater reliability and concurrent validity. RESULTS: A literature search identified 11 assessments and 542 items representing cognitive, social-emotional and adaptive, language and motor domains. Content validity was assessed to select and adapt items. A complete assessment tool was designed to be administered in four settings within the preschool. This was further improved during pre and pilot testing and teacher training. Cronbach's alpha measuring internal consistency was > 0.70 for cognitive, language, social-emotional and adaptive domains across all three age groups in 1809 children. Interrater reliability was > 65% for age groups 36-47 and 47- 60 months. Concurrent validity using a clinical gold standard demonstrated sensitivity of more than 0.75 for all age groups with variable specificities (24-35 months: 0.71, 36- 47 months: 0.43 and 48-60 months: 0.67) assessed in 75 children. CONCLUSIONS: This culturally and linguistically adapted tool was tested nationally in Sri Lanka. The inte-rrater reliability between teachers and research assistants was higher than 65% for all domains in children more than 36 months. The preliminary iteration confirms it as an acceptable screening assessment for all age groups but with significantly lower specificity in the 36-47 month age group. Further improvement in certain domains together with intense teacher training is likely to enhance the validity and reliability of the assessment.