Facebook as the Tool for E-Recruitment for SMEs amid Covid-19: A Conceptual Model To Extend Benefits Of E-Recruitment Towards Firm's Sustainability

COVID-19 forced almost all forms of firms to opt for digitized business models. This impact was also found true for SMEs. In fact, the impact of pandemic was much drastic and therefore use of e-business models was opted not only to succeed but also to survive in the times of crises. However, there is severe knowledge and research gap with respect to the use of e-recruitment during pandemic and firm's sustainability. Especially with respect to SMEs the research inventory is not satisfactory to highlight impact of e-recruitment on firm's performance or sustainability. However, sustainability was the real issue and area for concern specially for SMEs at the wake of pandemic. Thus, this study has been conducted purposively to reflect the impact of e-recruitment through social media platform on sustainability of SMEs at the wake of pandemic. The research population includes top management of SMEs operating in Karachi and data has been collected through loose quota sampling. Analysis of data has been done through structural equation modeling which indicated that Facebook is perceived as an effective tool for e-recruitment by SMEs amid COVID-19.

Considering Risks to Researchers and Staff in Low-Resource Settings during Public Health Crises: A Proposed Conceptual Model.

Human subjects research protections have historically focused on mitigating risk of harm and promoting benefits for research participants. In many low-resource settings (LRS), complex and often severe challenges in daily living, poverty, geopolitical uprisings, sociopolitical, economic, and climate crises increase the burdens of even minimal risk research. While there has been important work to explore the scope of ethical responsibilities of researchers and research teams to respond to these wider challenges and hidden burdens in global health research, less attention has been given to the ethical dilemmas and risk experienced by frontline researcher staff as they perform research-related activities in LRS. Risks such as job insecurity, moral distress, infection, or physical harm can be exacerbated during public health crises, as recently highlighted by the COVID-19 pandemic. We highlight the layers of risk research staff face in LRS and present a conceptual model to characterize drivers of this risk, with particular attention to public health crises. A framework by which funders, institutions, principal investigators, and/or research team leaders can systematically consider these additional layers of risk to researchers and frontline staff is an important and needed addition to routine research proposals and protocol review.

MP-VHPPI: Meta predictor for viral host protein-protein interaction prediction in multiple hosts and viruses.

Viral-host protein-protein interaction (VHPPI) prediction is essential to decoding molecular mechanisms of viral pathogens and host immunity processes that eventually help to control the propagation of viral diseases and to design optimized therapeutics. Multiple AI-based predictors have been developed to predict diverse VHPPIs across a wide range of viruses and hosts, however, these predictors produce better performance only for specific types of hosts and viruses. The prime objective of this research is to develop a robust meta predictor (MP-VHPPI) capable of more accurately predicting VHPPI across multiple hosts and viruses. The proposed meta predictor makes use of two well-known encoding methods Amphiphilic Pseudo-Amino Acid Composition (APAAC) and Quasi-sequence (QS) Order that capture amino acids sequence order and distributional information to most effectively generate the numerical representation of complete viral-host raw protein sequences. Feature agglomeration method is utilized to transform the original feature space into a more informative feature space. Random forest (RF) and Extra tree (ET) classifiers are trained on optimized feature space of both APAAC and QS order separate encoders and by combining both encodings. Further predictions of both classifiers are utilized to feed the Support Vector Machine (SVM) classifier that makes final predictions. The proposed meta predictor is evaluated over 7 different benchmark datasets, where it outperforms existing VHPPI predictors with an average performance of 3.07, 6.07, 2.95, and 2.85% in terms of accuracy, Mathews correlation coefficient, precision, and sensitivity, respectively. To facilitate the scientific community, the MP-VHPPI web server is available at https://sds_genetic_analysis.opendfki.de/MP-VHPPI/.

National response to the COVID-19 Omicron variant crisis in the ambulatory hemodialysis service in the State of Qatar.

The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic has had a significant worldwide impact since its emergence in 2019. End-stage kidney disease patients have been among the most vulnerable population affected and have a higher risk of acquiring infection and developing more severe disease. We have encountered three major COVID-19 waves in Qatar and they have required different strategies to overcome. The most recent wave was due to the Omicron variant characterized by higher transmissibility. The monthly incidence of COVID-19 infection during the Omicron wave in patients with end-stage renal disease peaked at 256 patients compared to 35 and 39 patients during the first and second waves, respectively. In addition, more than one-third of our dialysis staff became infected during this wave. Unlike the previous two waves, COVID-19 due to the Omicron variant was less severe with only 5% of hemodialysis patients requiring admission to the intensive care unit compared to 25% during the previous waves. The Omicron variant wave resulted in a crisis in our country due to the high number of non-hospitalized COVID-19 hemodialysis patients and the severe staff shortage. Several measures were taken to overcome the crisis, such as designating one facility to dialyze all COVID-19 ambulatory patients, reducing dialysis sessions to 3 hours, and introducing a fourth dialysis shift. This article describes the challenges we faced in the ambulatory hemodialysis service during the Omicron wave and the measures taken in the COVID-19 and non-COVID-19 designated facilities to combat the crisis.

Trend of social media use by undergraduate medical students; a comparison between medical students and educators.

Purpose: Social media (SM) is one of the most powerful tools of communication and learning in the recent era. Different types of information can be shared through these social networking sites in the form of texts, videos, pictures, audios, and references (contacts). Due to the constant increase in the use of these social networking sites in our daily routine life especially during the COVID 19 pandemic, their use in teaching and learning has become inevitable. Social media has immense potential to enhance its role in educational settings. Both the students and educators use it for communication, education, sharing and expressing knowledge, and recreation. Therefore, the present study aims to find out the most frequently used social network sites for learning and easy communication between medical students and educators. Objective: This study sought to explore the most frequently used social networking sites by the medical students and educators at Batterjee Medical College. Methods: A cross-sectional study was carried out to assess the trends of usage of SM as an extracurricular way of enhancing learning and teaching experience among medical students and educators in Batterjee Medical College; Saudi Arabia from November 2020 to March 2021.A pre-validated self-administrated questionnaire was built using Google Drive forms and distributed to medical students and educators via emails and WhatsApp. Convenient sampling was used to collect the data. Conclusion: Social media has immense potential to enhance its role in educational settings. Students in our study preferred YouTube and WhatsApp for their learning and communication especially, during COVID 19 pandemic. However, to further enhance their utility choosing the right platform, the amount and quality of the information shared to ensure optimal benefit, providing ethical guides, and professional standards for SM use at institutional levels are the few challenges that need to address.

Narrative synthesis systematic review of Pakistani women's health outcomes from primary care interventions.

OBJECTIVE: Women living in Pakistan have complex health problems including infectious and non-communicable diseases, accident and injuries, and mental health problems. While a majority of these women rely on primary healthcare services for all of their healthcare needs, there has to date been no overview of the extent of their effectiveness. The objective of this review was to (1) synthesise the available evidence regarding the effectiveness of primary care based interventions aimed at improving women's mental and physical health and (2) identify the factors that promote effectiveness for women's health outcomes. METHODS: Five academic databases were searched, including PubMed, BMC Medicine, Medline, CINAHL and the Cochrane Library. A search was also made of the grey literature. The quality of included studies was assessed using a standardised critical appraisal tool, and the findings summarised using a narrative synthesis. RESULTS: In total, 18 studies were included in the review. Eight involved evaluations of counselling interventions, three health education and awareness interventions, two social and psychosocial interventions, and five were evaluations of combination interventions. Twelve of the included studies were randomised controlled trials. Of these 14 reported significant outcomes, and 4 further interventions showed partially favourable results. However, interventions mostly targeted women's mental or reproductive health. CONCLUSIONS: While the evidence is limited in terms of quality and what has been evaluated, a number of interventions appear to be effective in improving outcomes for women. The three key approaches include the adoption of an active door-to-door and group-based approach; utilisation of community peers who can deliver care cost-effectively and who are more accepted in the community; and the integration of financial vouchers to support uptake in poor populations. PROSPERO REGISTRATION NUMBER: CRD42020203472.

Impact Of Emotional Intelligence On Facets Of Organizational Commitment Among Medical Employees Amid Covid-19 Pandemic

This study investigates the impact of Emotional Intelligence on three facets of Organizational commitment i.e., affective, continuance and normative commitment among medical employees amid COVID 19 Pandemic. Moreover, this research also checked the moderating role of gender in this relationship. Survey instrument was used for data collection. Convenience sampling was used as a sampling technique. Population was medical employees (MBBS, BDS, physiotherapists, pharmacists, psychologists, nurses) working in the large public and private hospitals of Pakistan, United Kingdom and United States of America. 400 questionnaires were distributed and out of those 354 were usable for the analysis purpose. This research used Smart PLS to assess the data through partial least square equation modeling (PLS-SEM). Findings of this study showed that there was significant and direct impact of Emotional Intelligence on affective, continuance and normative commitment of medical employees. Gender moderates the influence of Emotional Intelligence on Continuance Commitment. However, gender does not moderate the influence of Emotional Intelligence on Affective and normative commitment of medical employees.

Epidemiology, Impact, and Management Strategies of Anti-Glomerular Basement Membrane Disease.

Anti-glomerular basement membrane (anti-GBM) disease is a rare but serious autoimmune disease, which is characterized by the development of pathogenic antibodies to type IV collagen antigens in the glomerular and alveolar basement membranes. This results in rapidly progressive glomerulonephritis (GN), alveolar hemorrhage, or both. A variety of environmental factors can trigger the disease in genetically predisposed patients. Temporal associations with influenza, SARS-CoV-2 infection, and COVID-19 vaccination have been described although there is insufficient evidence to suggest causality. Anti-GBM disease accounts for approximately 20% of the cases of rapidly progressive GN cases secondary to crescentic GN, but is an uncommon cause of end-stage kidney disease. Early diagnosis by detection of circulating antibodies, increased awareness of atypical as well as complex clinical variants of the disease, and combined therapy with immunosuppression and plasma exchange has improved the prognosis of patients with this potentially fatal disease. Progress has been hampered by the rarity of anti-GBM disease, but new agents and therapeutic regimens are emerging.

Perceptions, challenges and experiences of frontline healthcare providers in Emergency Departments regarding Workplace Violence during the COVID-19 pandemic: A protocol for an exploratory qualitative study from an LMIC.

INTRODUCTION: Workplace violence (WPV) against Healthcare Workers (HCWs) has emerged as a global issue. Emergency Department (ED) HCWs as front liners are more vulnerable to it due to the nature of their work and exposure to unique medical and social situations. COVID-19 pandemic has led to a surge in the number of cases of WPV against HCWs, especially against ED HCWs. In most cases, the perpetrators of these acts of violence are the patients and their attendants as families. The causes of this rise are multifactorial; these include the inaccurate spread of information and rumours through social media, certain religious perspectives, propaganda and increasing anger and frustration among the general public,ED overcrowding, staff shortages etc. We aim to conduct a qualitative exploratory study among the ED frontline care providers at the two major EDs of Karachi city. The purpose of this study is to determine the perceptions, challenges and experiences regarding WPV faced by ED healthcare providers during the COVID-19 pandemic. METHODS AND ANALYSIS: For this research study, a qualitative exploratory research design will be employed using in-depth interviews and a purposive sampling approach. Data will be collected using in-depth interviews from study participants working at the EDs of Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre (JPMC) and the Aga Khan University Hospital(AKUH) Karachi, Pakistan. Thestudy data will be analysed thematically using NVivo V.12 Plus software. ETHICS AND DISSEMINATION: The ethical approval for this study was obtained from the Aga Khan University Ethical Review Committee and from Jinnah postgraduate Medical Center (JPMC). The results of the study will be disseminated to the scientific community and to the research subjects participating in the study.The findings of this study will help to explore the perceptions of ED healthcare providers regarding WPV during the COVID-19 pandemic and provide a better understanding of study participant's' challenges concerning WPV during the COVID-19 pandemic.

PRICE COVID19 Data Report December 2021 Pakistan Registry of Intensive Care (preprint)

Abstract Pakistan Registry of Intensive Care (PRICE) is a platform that has enabled standardized COVID-19 clinical data collection based on ISARIC/WHO Clinical Characterization Protocol. The near real-time data platform includes epidemiology, severity of illness, microbiology, treatment and outcomes of patients admitted with suspected or laboratory confirmed COVID19 infection to 67 intensive care and high dependency units across the country. Data has been extracted and analysed at regular intervals to inform stakeholders and improve care practices. This is our 28th report including all patients with suspected or confirmed COVID-19 from 26th March 2020 to 26th December 2021. Key findings from 8624 patients who met eligibility criteria, are as follows: [bullet] Median age of 60 years (IQR 50-70). [bullet] The most common symptoms were shortness of breath (n = 6428, 77.8%), fever (n = 6091, 73.8%), and Cough (n = 3354, 38.9%) [bullet] The most common comorbidity was hypertension followed by diabetes. [bullet] During the course of illness 2804 (32.6%) patients received non-invasive ventilation, whereas 2474 (28.8%) patients had mechanical ventilation as their highest organ support. In addition, 2246 (26.1%) patients needed haemodynamic support and 1249 (14.7%) patients required renal replacement therapy as their highest organ support. [bullet] Median APACHE II score was 18 [bullet] Overall mortality at ICU discharge was 39.2% [bullet] Increasing age and requirement for invasive mechanical ventilation were independent risk factors for mortality increased the risk of death

Kidney Transplant Recipients Infected With Coronavirus Disease 2019: Retrospective Qatar Experience.

BACKGROUND: This study aimed to evaluate the incidence of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) infection on kidney transplant, mortality, and risk factors associated with infection acquisition and severe illness in kidney transplant recipients with COVID-19. METHODS: Of 693 kidney transplant recipients who reported to our center, 249 were tested for COVID-19 by throat and nasal swab reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction. Of these, 43 recipients tested positive and 206 recipients tested negative. Among the 43 positive recipients, 9 were treated within an isolation facility, 25 were admitted to the hospital, and 9 were admitted to the intensive care unit (ICU). Risk factors associated with positive results and ICU admission were evaluated. RESULTS: COVID-19 was found in 6% of transplant recipients. Asian ethnicity (p = .003), history of hypertensive nephropathy (p = .01), AB blood group (P = .04), and higher tacrolimus trough levels (P = .007) were more frequent in the COVID-19 positive than in the COVID-19 negative group. ICU admission was more frequent in recipients presenting with fever, shortness of breath, and acute allograft dysfunction. Renal replacement therapy was required in 3 (7%) of 43 recipients, and mortality was reported in 1 (2.3%) recipient. Acute allograft dysfunction was an independent risk factor for severe COVID-19 (odds ratio, 93.7; 95% confidence interval, 2.37-3710.94; P = .02). CONCLUSIONS: Higher tacrolimus targets may be associated with COVID-19 development. Acute kidney injury during the COVID-19 course may be a sign of severe disease. Prognostication of COVID-19 severity in kidney transplant recipients is crucial for early recognition of critical illness and may ensure early intervention.

Assessing the knowledge of trainee residents for liver involvement and related issues in COVID-19 pandemic

Background: Regular educational activities have suffered since the start of COVID-19 pandemic. New data has been emerging regularly regarding COVID-19 and the optimal way of care for patients with COVID-19 infection. Emphasis upon dispensing knowledge in current pandemic times should be made. Aims and Objective: We assessed the knowledge of internal medicine and gastroenterology trainees regarding liver involvement and related issues in the current COVID-19 pandemic. Materials and Methods: This online survey comprised of 10 questions designed to examine the basic knowledge of Sars-Cov-2 virus, knowledge regarding liver involvement in COVID-19, and the ability to decide on patient care. Results: A total of 100 responses were collected. Most of the responses were from Pakistan (n=75). More than 80% of trainees responded correctly regarding the accurate indication of endoscopic procedures during COVID-19 pandemic, absence of ACE-II receptor expression on astrocytes, upper respiratory secretions being an eligible sample for SARSCOV-II, avoiding regular outpatient follow up, avoiding hydroxychloroquine as a prophylactic drug, and azithromycin in decompensated cirrhosis, continuing beta-blockers and lactulose in a decompensated patient, melena being an accurate indication for screening endoscopy and the choosing right set of PPEs. Less than 50% of responders knew correctly regarding NAFLD being a notorious factor for COVID-19 related complications, ACE-II receptor expression by cholangiocytes and enterocytes, saliva and stool being an eligible sample for SARS-COV-II detection, palliative approach as an appropriated management step for decompensated-CLD patients and history of ascites as an appropriate indication for screening endoscopy. GI trainees performed better in some areas of knowledge Conclusions: Trainees were updated in many aspects of the recent guidance in the management of COVID-19 but there were many lacunae in the knowledge. So, continuous medical education activities are essential to keep the residents updated about the changing developments in the management of COVID-19. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] Copyright of Asian Journal of Medical Sciences is the property of Manipal Colleges of Medical Sciences and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Restructuring nephrology services to combat COVID-19 pandemic: Report from a Middle Eastern country.

Coronavirus disease 2019 has spread across the world and has been classified as a pandemic. It has overwhelmed the healthcare systems. Specifically, it has overstretched the intensive care units and renal replacement therapy services in many countries. In this paper, we discuss the reconfiguration of nephrology services in the State of Qatar during the current pandemic. We highlight the key strategies that have been implemented to ensure that renal replacement therapy capacity is not constrained in either the intensive care or ambulatory setting. Some innovative approaches for the safe delivery of ambulatory care to dialysis and kidney transplant patients are also discussed.