ABSTRACT
Technostress-the difficulty of adapting to technologies-is a psychosocial condition that can affect one's emotional state and certainly seems to be affecting today's society. This is no longer a concept that is exclusive to workers whose work activities are directly related to technology;it now also affects millions of students in education. Digital migration forced by compulsory confinement has led to technostress in students all over the world, with consequences such as rejection, denial, fear, uncertainty and a series of other problems that affect students' mental state and integrity. These conditions in turn lead to a decrease in the quality of education, as students become fatigued, tired, or bored by having to spend so much time in front of information and communication technologies. The purpose of this chapter is to measure the level of technostress in higher education students who have been forced to change from on-site to the online educational models. It is also intended to compare the perception of the same students regarding these two educational models, in order to detect variants that affect their academic performance. The research uses a four-dimensional construct, in addition to analysing students' perception of each educational model through a fifth dimension. The results show that for students, the forced change from on-site to online education has posed a great challenge, resulting in negation, rejection, and addiction, among other conditions, which together account for a high level of technostress. © 2022 Emerald Publishing Limited. All rights reserved.
ABSTRACT
Introduction: In December 2019, a new respiratory disease, named COVID-19, caused by a novel coronavirus, emerged in Wuhan and since then spread rapidly throughout China and worldwide. Hemodialysis patients are an especially vulnerable subgroup of the general population. However, there are only a few reports on the course of COVID-19 in maintenance hemodialysis patients. Case report: We describe in depth the clinical, analytical, and radiological details of 9 hemodialysis patients from a single center in Madrid (Spain) diagnosed with COVID-19. Furthermore, we describe and discuss the therapeutic aspects and the patients’ outcomes. Discussion: We present one of the first case series of chronic hemodialysis patients with COVID-19. Between March 14 and April 8, 2020, out of 76 prevalent patients in our hemodialysis unit, 9 (11.8%) patients were diagnosed with COVID-19. The most common symptoms were fever (77.8%), asthenia (77.8%), cough (55.6%), and dyspnea (33.3%). A total of 3 patients developed severe pneumonia, whereas 4 patients developed mild pneumonia. In 2 patients, no pathologic changes were found on chest radiography. All patients presented lymphopenia. While 6 (66.7%) patients required hospitalization, none of them was admitted to intensive care unit. The most common treatments used were azithromycin (100%), hydroxychloroquine (66.7%), lopinavir/ritonavir (55.6%) and β-interferon (22.2%). In general, we observed a mild to moderate severity of disease in our case series. One patient died, however due to a cause not related to COVID-19.