Preparing and conducting objective structured clinical examination for oman medical specialty board r1-r4 residents.

The Objective Structured Clinical Examination (OSCE) has been a common tool of assessment in both undergraduate and postgraduate medicine, and has been reported to have both higher reliability and validity over the oral exam. In addition, another advantage is that it reduces luck by standardizing both examiners and patients. This article describes our experience in organizing and conducting an OSCE for Oman Medical Specialty Board residents in Psychiatry.

Eating attitudes and body dissatisfaction in adolescents: Cross-cultural study.

Aims: Sociocultural factors are thought to be important in the pathogenesis of eating disorders. However, there have been few studies comparing eating behavior among various cultural populations. The aim of the present study is to compare attitudes towards bodyweight and shape, and desire for thinness in Japanese male and female subjects with those in people from other countries and of different ethnic origin.

Tendency toward deliberate food restriction, fear of fatness and somatic attribution in cross-cultural samples.

Objective: To compare Omani and western teenagers attending schools in Muscat, Sultanate of Oman and Filipino teenagers residing in Manila, Philippines on indices of deliberate food restriction and dieting behavior.

Methods: The sample consisted of 444 students who were assessed using the cross-culturally valid measure, Eating Attitude Test-26, a subscale of Eating Disorder Inventory to gauge the presence of the drive for thinness or 'fat phobia' and the Bradford Somatic Inventory to elicit the presence of somatization.

Result: Significant differences in attitudes to eating, body image and somatization between the western and non-western teenagers were found.

Control and applications of immiscible liquids in microchannels.

Photolithography was used in combination with photocleavable self-assembled monolayers to pattern surface free energies inside microchannels enabling the control of the boundary between immiscible liquids. While aqueous solutions are confined to the hydrophilic pathways by surface forces alone, organic liquids are confined to the hydrophobic region only if the aqueous liquid first occupies the hydrophilic region. In this way, stable liquid boundaries between immiscible liquids are possible as long as the pressures are maintained below critical values.

A case of bilateral ptosis with unsteady gait: suggestibility and culture in conversion disorder.

We report a case of a 14-year-old girl who presented, following a sudden onset, with bilateral ptosis, gait disturbance, difficulty swallowing and loss of appetite, right hypochondriacal pain, and frontal headache. Protracted neurological and medical examinations were unremarkable; neither was precipitating psychological stresses evident. The condition, which manifest as typical conversion disorder, lasted for one year.

Dissociative disorders in the Sultanate of Oman.

Objective: To study the clinical manifestations and psychosocial aspects of dissociative (conversion) disorders (DD) in the Sultanate of Oman.

Method: A retrospective analysis was made of data derived from case records of patients admitted as in-patients to the Sultan Qaboos University Hospital, Oman, over a period of 8 years.

Results: A higher prevalence of DD was noted in Oman compared to western countries.