Co-infection of COVID-19 patients with atypical bacteria: A study based in Jordan.

Objective: The aim of this work was to know the prevalence of Chlamydophila pneumoniae and Mycoplasma pneumoniae in coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) patients in Jordan. Also, to assess a TaqMan real-time polymerase chain reaction (PCR) assay in detecting these two bacteria. Methods: This is a retrospective study performed over the last five months of the 2021. All nasopharyngeal specimens from COVID-19 patients were tested for C. pneumonia, and M. pneumoniae. The C. pneumoniae Pst-1 gene and M. pneumoniae P1 cytadhesin protein gene were the targets. Results: In this study, 14 out of 175 individuals with confirmed severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection (8.0%) were co-infected with C. pneumoniae or M. pneumoniae. Co-infection with SARS-CoV-2 and C. pneumoniae was reported in 5 (2.9%) patients, while 9 (5.1%) patients had M. pneumoniae and SARS-CoV-2 co-infection. The mean (± std) of the correlation coefficient of the calibration curve for real-time PCR analysis was -0.993 (± 0.001) for C. pneumoniae and -0.994 (± 0.003) for M. pneumoniae. The mean amplification efficiencies of C. pneumoniae and M. Pneumoniae were 187.62% and 136.86%, respectively. Conclusion: In this first study based in Jordan, patients infected with COVID-19 have a low rate of atypical bacterial co-infection. However, clinicians should suspect co-infections with both common and uncommon bacteria in COVID-19 patients. Large prospective investigations are needed to give additional insight on the true prevalence of these co-infections and their impact on the clinical course of COVID-19 patients.

Evaluation of the effectiveness of educational medical informatics tutorial on improving pharmacy students' knowledge and skills about the clinical problem-solving process.

Objective: To investigate the effectiveness of an online tutorial and its impact on improving knowledge and skills of pharmacy students in the clinical problem-solving process that is necessary to implement pharmaceutical care. Methods: This is a prospective interventional study conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic restrictions using four novel templates. The first two levels of Kirkpatrick's Model (Reaction and Learning) were used. Results: 129 participants completed all of the online training parts. The findings indicated a significant improvement in the students' knowledge and skills. The participants achieved higher score following the tutorial than the baseline, with a statistically significant difference (p < 0.001). There was a significant improvement in the number of detected treatment-related problems. The majority of students were satisfied with the overall training process and stated a high evaluation score out of 10 (mean = 7.93 ± 1.42, median = 8.00). Conclusion: The educational intervention achieved a substantial positive impact on decision-making skills of participating students and was considered effective in helping them attain basic skills such as teamwork, peer assessment, communication and critical evaluation. Healthcare providers must work together to ensure accurate medication use during care transitions. Pharmacists, as medication experts, play an important role in the implementation process. Pharmacy educators must prepare pharmacy student to use pharmaceutical care in their future practice.

Perspectives of the community in the developing countries toward telemedicine and pharmaceutical care during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Background: Pharmaceutical care (PC) services have expanded in recent years, resulting in improved patient outcomes. However, such PC services are currently available for free in the majority of Arabic countries. During the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic, telemedicine is especially beneficial since it allows for continuity of care while allowing for social distancing and minimizing the risk of infection. Objective: To assess the community's attitude, opinion, and willingness to pay for telemedicine and PC services during COVID-19 pandemic, as well as to create a website provision for telemedicine and PC services. Methods: This cross-sectional study was conducted, over five months (December 2020- April 2021), among the general population in Arabic countries, excluding pharmacists, physicians, and pharmacy students. Results: A total of 1717 participants were involved, most of them were from Jordan (52.2%) and Iraq (24.8%). Sixty two percent of participants seek pharmacists' advice whenever they have any medication changes and 45.1% of the participants agreed with the idea of paying pharmacists to decrease medication errors. Interestingly, 89.5% of participants encouraged the idea of creating a website that provides a PC, and 35.5% of them would pay for it. The failure to document the medical information of the patients had most applicants' agreement as a reason of medical errors (M=4.17/5, SD=0.787). More than three-quarters of participants agreed that creating a database containing the patients' medical information will reduce medical errors. Conclusion: From a patients' perspective, this study suggests a large patient need for expanding PC services in Arabic countries and introduces a direct estimate of the monetary value for the PC services to contribute to higher savings. The majority of participants supported the idea of creating a website provision of telemedicine and PC services, and a considerable proportion of them agreed to pay for it.