Teachers' stress experiences during COVID-19-related emergency remote teaching: Results from an exploratory study

The study provides a portrait of teachers' stress experience in the face of the needed introduction of information systems (IS) during COVID-19-related emergency remote teaching. Researchers contacted the headmasters at several Italian schools, who choose teacher's representatives. The latters shared the online questionnaire among colleagues;the teachers voluntarily decided to participate. The cross-sectional study involved 237 Italian teachers (81.5% female;M-age = 50.20;SDage = 8.87). This survey wanted to detect information systems-related distress and eustress on the job, and technostress creators and inhibitors. Descriptive statistics, correlational analyses, and a multiple regression model using structural equation modeling were run. As according to the model, IS-related distress and eustress on the job were the dependent variables, technostress creators and inhibitors the independent ones, and respondents' gender and age the control ones. Both technostress creators and inhibitors showed significant relationships with IS-related distress and eustress. Technostress creators showed a positive relationship with IS-related distress and a negative one with IS-related eustress;conversely, technostress inhibitors showed an opposite pattern of relationships. Only technostress creators significantly associate to both age and gender in the model, suggesting that older, female teachers tended to experience more technostress creators. Due to the increases in remote work, the awareness of IS-related stress experiences represents a key factor to evaluate work-related risks and prevent stress-related problems. The results from this study suggest that using technologies can represent both a threat to one's well-being, highlighting the need to provide adequate trainings and support, but also a resource for personal enrichment.

Factors Influencing Deprescribing Activities in the Management of Hospitalized Patients in Polytherapy

Objectives: To investigate the factors influencing the clinical choice to change the current patients' therapies, and the impact of potential support of digital innovation and other knowledge assets, such as INTERCheckWEB information technology and/or guidelines, to optimize the prescription decision-making process in older and frailer patients, in polytherapy. Method(s): A narrative literature review was firstly conducted to define the main clinical and non-clinical factors, impacting on the propensity of the clinicians to change the patients' current therapies. Secondly, an observational study was developed involving 35 clinicians referring to the Internal Medicine wards, of five Italian medium size hospitals. Each clinician completed a questionnaire, aimed at evaluating 15 clinical cases of patients in polypharmacy and suffering from multiple diseases, thus defining if in case of specific information, they would have changed the patient's current therapy, during an Internal Medicine hospitalization. A hierarchical sequential linear regression model was implemented to define the predictors of the clinicians' choice to change the current therapy. Result(s): Inferential analysis demonstrated that younger patient's age (beta=-0.073, p-value=0.048), autonomy (beta=0.303, p-value=0.000) and body-max index (beta=0.505, p-value=0.000), as well as clinician's perception with regard to INTERCheckWEB ease of use (beta=0.298, p-value=0.043) and seniority (beta=0.087, p-value=0.009), number of drugs assumed by the patients (beta=0.541, p-value=0.000) and number of concomitant diseases (beta=0.302, p-value=0.000) are factors influencing a potential change in the current therapy. The above aspects explained the 53.7% of the clinician's choice variance, to modify the prescription, reducing the number of treatments to be administered to the patients. Conclusion(s): The findings provide insight into factors influencing clinical assessment decisions, that could highly be replicable in the COVID-19 era, since hospitalized COVID-19 patients are frequently older with comorbidities and receiving polypharmacy, thus strengthening the need for the clinicians to modify the therapy. Copyright © 2022

THE PHOTO DIARIES METHOD TO CATCH THE DAILY EXPERIENCE OF ITALIAN UNIVERSITY STUDENTS DURING COVID-19 LOCKDOWN

The aim of this research was to explore Italian students’ lockdown experience during the COVID-19 pandemic to understand their emotions and the coping strategies they played out during their daily lives at home through photo diaries. The research was carried out in six Italian universities involving 109 participants. The task required each student to take one photo per day for one week in T1 and one in T2, representing their mood during their daily life at home and to give it a title and a brief description. Overall, 1,526 photographs with texts were collected. The main subjects of the photographs were objects, the most frequent coping strategy was self-distraction, and most participants expressed emotions of joy and anticipation but also sadness and fear. Then, the associations between the characteristics of their photos and the emotions and coping strategies from their diary entries were analyzed. For example, emotional support and joy were positively associated with family, pets, and food, while fear and sadness were represented with objects. Implications of the results are discussed, including considerations about using photo diaries during collective disasters. © 2022, University of Salento. All rights reserved.

Teachers' efficacy in the face of emergency remote teaching during COVID-19 pandemic: The protective role of personal resilience and Sense of Responsible Togetherness

Several countries worldwide enforced National lockdowns to face COVID-19 pandemic, causing the shutdown of schools, universities, and other educational services among their consequences. This required teachers to address new demands and responsibilities for delivering their work due to Emergency Remote Teaching, undermining their work-related efficacy. This study deepens teachers' personal resilience and Sense of Responsible Togetherness with reference to their school communities as factors potentially supporting their work-related efficacy under these challenging circumstances. An online questionnaire was administered to 159 Italian teachers. Both dimensions confirmed their expected positive association, suggesting the need for interventions considering and strengthening school/academic communities. consistently with an ecological perspective.

Prospettive di Connessioni Urbane: A case study about using Instagram to keep in touch with urban places in Naples (Italy) during COVID-19 pandemic

Location-aware, ubiquitous, social media have proved broad affordances which can impact their users' local community experience, sustaining and enhancing their tie to their community as a set of meaningful places and as a social and relational entity-that is, their self-in-community. Thus, when COVID-19-related restrictions have partially or totally hindered the opportunities for individuals to attend common places in their community and, more specifically, to keep in touch with their social meanings, these social media have represented reliable alternative strategies to do so. Our "Prospettive di Connessioni Urbane"(Perspectives of Urban Connections) project relied on Instagram with the aim to increase citizens' focus on and contact with local places and their social dimensions-even when their attendance was hindered by COVID-19-related restrictions. We provided an Instagram account as an outlet for citizens' photos highlighting how some places were linked to social dimensions for them and launched a hashtag which could make users feel part of a community and allow more visibility to the contents. Furthermore, the collected photos were also located on a virtual map, allowing citizens at large to take a virtual tour of their city and feel their social meanings even when they were hindered from doing it in person. These tools could provide social and community psychologists as well as designers with useful pieces of information to disentangle the patterns of the interplay between social media community-related uses and local community experience. © 2021 ACM.

Neutralizing antibody decay in patients with mild or asymptomatic covid-19 infection

Background: Development of neutralizing antibody (Nab) is crucial for protection from SARS-CoV-2 reinfection. The aim of the study was to analyze Nab titers (NabT) and kinetics over time in a cohort of 85 unselected not hospitalized Italian subjects (pts) with COVID-19 infection, with mild or no symptoms, tested after symptoms onset or for surveillance of healthcare workers. Methods: Two-fold serial dilutions of heat-inactivated sera were incubated with 100 TCID50 of SARS-CoV-2 virus (lineage B) at 37°C for 1 h in 96-wells plates. Then, pre-seeded 10,000 Vero E6 cell lines per well (ATCC CRL-1586) were treated with serum-virus mixtures and incubated at 37°C. After 72h, cell viability was determined through the commercial kit Cell-titer Glo 2.0 (Promega). The NabT was defined as the reciprocal value of the sample dilution that showed a 50% protection of virus cytopathic effect (ID50). NabT ≥5 ID50 were defined as SARS-CoV-2 positive and neutralizing. Chi squared, Wilcoxon, Fisher's exact test and Spearman's correlation coefficient were used. Results: Female were 57 (67.1%) and median age was 48 years. Pts were classified as early tested (ET, <60 days, n=40) and late tested (LT, >60 days, n=45). Overall, 30 (35.3%) pts had low (<10 ID50) NabT, 33 (38.8%) had intermediate NabT (ID50 11 to 50), and 22 (25.9%) had high NabT (ID50 >51, 9 of them >100). The frequency of each NabT class was comparable in ET and LT: low NabT was found in 11 (27.5%) and 19 (42.2%), intermediate in 16 (40%) and 18 (40%) and high in 13 (32.5%) and 8 pts (17.8%), respectively. However, no NabT higher than 200 ID50 was found in LT vs 5 in ET (p=0.04). No correlation between age and gender and NabT was found. At now, 23 pts had 2 NabT available during the follow up (T1 and T2);the interval between the two tests was 117 days (median). Almost all pts (20/23, 87%), showed NabT decrease: the median value of percentage decrease respect to the previous value was 63.2% (IQR 30.8-85.7) (p=0.0006). One pt had undetectable NabT at both times and two pts experienced an increase (Figure 1). No correlation between interval length, T2 value and percentage of decrease was observed. Conclusion: One third of pts had a very low level of NabT regardless of test timing. After 60 days from diagnosis a subset of pts had a value >100 but no >200, differently from the first 60 days, suggesting that NabT level could be a useful tool for dating past infections. The observed decrease of NabT has implications for reinfection and vaccine.

Changes in antibiotic stewardship during COVID 19pandemic: Experience in Internal Medicine

Background and Aim of the study: Emergence of SARS-CoV-2required enormous effort to control the spread of infection andprotect the most fragile within society. This has generated an hospital focus on the threat of known and emerging infections likelyby loosening some infection control and antimicrobial management policies. The current pandemic appears to result in an increased risk of antibiotic resistance. Many patients receiveantibiotics to keep secondary bacterial infections under controland for the need to perform invasive procedures. The stressful conditions to which staff are subjected may reduce the effectivenessof antimicrobial stewardship programs, and the massive use ofteleconsultation may have caused overprescription of antibiotics.Materials and Methods: We assessed the consumption of antibiotics, and the class of antibiotics consumed, also in relation tothe documented positivity of the culture tests,in relation to thechange in the epidemiological situation on March and April 2020compared to the same period of 2019.Results: We have documented only an increased use ofmacrolides and cephalosporins but an overall reduction in the useof antibiotics in 2020 compared to the same period of 2019, evenmore evident if we consider some classes of antibiotics,in particular carbapenems.Conclusions: It is unclear whether the consequences of thesechanges will have a positive or negative net impact on antimicrobial resistance rates;attention must be paid to controlling this pandemic but sustained efforts to address the long-term global threatof antimicrobial resistance should not be overlooked.

No harm from angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitors or angiotensin receptor inhibitors in patients with COVID-19. Results of a prospective study on a hospital-based cohort

This study aims to assess the effect of angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitors (ACEIs) and angiotensin receptor inhibitors (ARBs) on the course of COVID-19. It is a prospective study on 221 (M/F ratio= 143/78, mean age 72±13) consecutive hypertensive patients with COVID-19: 76 (34.4%) treated with ACEIs, 63 (28.5%) with ARBs and 82 (37.1%) with antihypertensives OTHER than ACEIs or ARBs. They were all followed up until discharge or death. BAD outcome was defined as the need for invasive mechanical ventilation or death. The three classes of medication were well balanced for confounding variables. BAD nly outcome was overall recorded in 63/221 (28%) patients, in 20/76 (26%) of ACEI, in 17/63 (27%) of ARB and in 26/82 (32%) of OTHER users, with no statistically significant difference in any comparison. These findings refute the hypothesis that treatment with ACEIs or ARBs may negatively affect the course of COVID-19.