Early Childhood Student Teaching Practicum in Turkey through Emergency Remote Teaching during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Turkish early childhood pre-service teachers had to follow their student teaching practicum courses through emergency remote teaching on the online platform available to them during COVID-19 pandemic like in most countries. The pre-service teachers were experimenting with this new form of student teaching practicum by building up new knowledge and experiences without being present in the school context and having no interaction with the children. This study aims to analyse early childhood education pre-service teachers' experiences of emergency remote teaching (ERT) during COVID-19 Pandemic in Turkey and explore how these experiences shape their professional development to meet the quality standards and preschool teacher competencies. Doing a content analysis of the codes through a qualitative data analysis software program (NVivo 12) and making a constant comparison between codes and categories, three themes as a result of this study after doing a content analysis of the data, have emerged: (1) Early childhood education pre-service teachers' practices in ERT supported only certain competencies. (2) With its natural structure of distance education, ERT restrained pre-service teachers' field experiences to enable them to gain the necessary competencies and qualifications for early childhood education (3) the pre-service teachers perceived ERT as insufficient for their placement experiences. There is a need for a regulation on how the practice in teacher education should be done in ERT since pre-service teachers' field placements have a crucial role in their training and there is a missing gap for practice during distance education.

Knowledge, Attitudes, Practices and Some Characteristic Features of People Recovered from COVID-19 in Turkey.

Background and objectives: The whole world is spending an extraordinary effort by implementing various measures to control and prevent the COVID-19 pandemic. The effectiveness of the preventive measures is greatly influenced by the public's knowledge, attitudes, and practices (KAP) towards the disease. In this study, KAP values and some characteristic features of people recovered from COVID-19 were determined by conducting a questionnaire survey. Materials and Methods: The questionnaire survey was conducted between 1 and 10 January 2021 on people who recovered from COVID-19 in a total of 150 different locations in Turkey. The questionnaire consisted of 46 questions: 14 for determining demographic and some characteristic features of the participants, and 32 for determining their knowledge, attitudes, and practices. The data obtained were evaluated using descriptive statistics, chi-squared tests, t-tests, and one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA). Results: It was determined that 63% of the participants had at least one chronic illness, 3.9% suffered from the disease twice, and 45.2% changed their smoking habits. The average knowledge score of the participants about COVID-19 was calculated as 10.25 (SD = 2.37; range 0-15). The participants were found to have a high level of knowledge about the symptoms and prevention methods in general, and positive changes in post-illness attitudes and behaviors. However, there was a great instability regarding the drugs and vaccines used in the treatment of COVID-19. Conclusions: This was the first study carried out in Turkey to determine knowledge, attitudes, practices, and some characteristic features of people who recovered from COVID-19. It was suggested that health authorities in the country need to develop more effective strategies and policies to find out permanent solutions in order to control and prevent the COVID-19 pandemic by taking into account the concerns of the public, particularly with regards to the drugs used in the treatment and vaccination.

Clinical outcomes of COVID-19 in hemodialysis patients in the city of Zonguldak, Turkey.

PURPOSE: Patients on maintenance hemodialysis are vulnerable to viral infections like COVID-19 because of the low chance of obedience and complying with rules besides the need for transfer to distant dialysis facilities. We investigated the impact and clinical effect of treatment of COVID-19 in dialysis patients. METHODS: We included patients on maintenance hemodialysis at different healthcare facilities in Zonguldak city. With the diagnosis of the first infected HD case, all other patients who shared the same session were screened. Hospitalized and clinically confirmed cases were included. COVID-19 diagnosis was made based on clinical, biochemical along radiologic findings. RESULTS: 34 (F/M:19/15, mean age 62 ± 13.2 years, dialysis duration 66.9 ± 57.7 months, length of hospital stay 16.2 ± 7.9 days) were diagnosed with COVID-19 infection. The prevalence of COVID-19 was found to be 18.4% of our exposed population. 38.2% of our patients were initially diagnosed by CT screening while asymptomatic. 35.3% had a fever as the first presenting symptom. Lymphopenia was the most common laboratory finding. Except for one, all had at least one comorbidity. Out of 12 (35.3%) patients admitted to ICU 6(17.6%) died. The deceased patients were older, presented with lower serum albumin and lymphocyte count, and had higher CRP and fibrinogen levels. High CRP level on admission was the only significant predictor of mortality. CONCLUSION: Early detection will lower mortality. In this study, with a low prevalence of COVID-19, the importance of early screening of both symptomatic and asymptomatic patients was shown to be highly important. Further studies are still needed to find out the most appropriate medical management.