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Background. Healthcare personnel (HCP) faced personal protective equipment (PPE)-related challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic including supply shortages, additional PPE items, different designs, and modified protocols (PR)/guidelines. We used a human factors engineering- and ethnography-informed approach to qualitatively assess the effects of these challenges on HCP and their PPE use during the pandemic. Methods. We observed PPE use (e.g., donning/doffing) by HCP caring for patients with COVID-19, those under investigation (PUI), and those with other conditions in 1 acute, 1 intermediate, and 1 intensive care unit at a large Midwestern academic hospital. We conducted mini-interviews with a subset of HCP to clarify observed behavior and identify PPE-related concerns. We captured observation, interview, and additional data (e.g., unit layouts, signage) in structured and unstructured notes. We transcribed and imported notes into MAXQDA and applied a deductive-inductive analytical approach. Results. From April-July 2021, we observed 188 patient care episodes and conducted 47 mini-interviews. Observations included COVID-19 (n=102), PUI (n=4), and non-COVID-19 (n=82) rooms on varying isolation precautions. PRs related to masks and eye protection changed during the study period and particularly affected donning practices. Other barriers included time-intensive PRs, unclear PR communication, unfamiliar designs, lack of surfaces on which to set supplies while donning/ doffing, and inconvenient PPE storage/cleaning locations. We observed recommendation/ PR deviations related to PPE use (e.g., exposed wrists, unapproved/no eye protection), cleaning, and signage/storage (e.g., designated 'clean' surfaces). HCP reported PPE extended use/reuse, provision of design options, and their own adaptations (e.g., 'batching' tasks, modifying PPE) facilitated donning/doffing. New PPE requirements highlighted tensions between HCP comfort and safety;despite this, some wanted to include modified PRs in their routine infection prevention practices permanently. Conclusion. PPE use barriers and facilitators related to modified COVID-19 PRs have implications for the ongoing pandemic and future respiratory pathogen outbreaks.
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In this paper is presented a proposed solution to predict the Mexican Epidemiological Semaphore (MES) color from a set of online news. This problem was presented in Rest-Mex 2022: Recommendation System, Sentiment Analysis and Covid Semaphore Prediction for Mexican Tourist Texts. This task consists of determining the MES color through the COVID-19 news in Mexico until 8 weeks in advance. The MES system is crucial because it indicates which kind of activities are allowed to the population, for example, tourism activities. Thus, our approach is based on the Mutual Information (MI) measure. In the training stage, by using the training data, our approach first clusters every word from every news by the respective class. Then, for each word in each class, we compute its MI value. In this way, the set of words (trained words) with their normalized MI value is used as class features. In the classification stage, when a new instance is given, each word is intersected with the trained words for each class, and the corresponding MI values of the intersected words are summed. The predicted class is assigned to the class with the highest sum value. The final ranking value on the testing data was 0.175716016. We think that the obtained results are because the data has many noise words (tokens), and our approach does not deal with that issue. © 2022 Copyright for this paper by its authors. Use permitted under Creative Commons License Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0).
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In low- and middle-income countries, food insecurity (FI) is a living reality for many households, particularly among the most vulnerable groups. The burden of household FI in Mozambique and how FI and coping strategies relate to perceived health are unknown. This study investigated the lived experiences and coping strategies of food-insecure households, along with their perceived health. Altogether, 16 in-depth interviews were performed, audio-recorded, and transcribed verbatim. A qualitative content analysis was carried out and five themes emerged: lived experiences of FI, coping strategies used in situations of FI, food choices, climate change and food security, and FI and perceived health. A wide range of lived experiences and coping strategies were reported, including cooking whatever is available, skipping meals, receiving money or food from friends and relatives, eating unsafe and low-quality foods, taking on additional work, cooking least-preferred foods, and having a monotonous and less-nutritious diet. Furthermore, the participants reported emotional distress, anxiety and depression, substance use, and other negative health outcomes. Some had diagnoses of hypertension, diabetes or HIV/AIDS. The findings suggest the need for employment creation and women's empowerment, as well as the implementation of appropriate policies and programmes to alleviate household FI.
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Undergraduate students from courses related to Computer Programming often face barriers such as insufficient prerequisites for difficult subjects and lack of motivation. Completing tasks such as logical reasoning, algorithm design, and programming is often more difficult than usual. On the other hand, these young students are very attracted to video games, especially in social distance protocols as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic and can spend many hours playing video games. Thus, educators can try to use video games as educational tools in an attempt to motivate and engage the study in a more playful way and closer to the interactivity of games that most students are already used to. In this sense, the purpose of this article is to present the reuse of a conventional open source 2D Point Click game, aimed at entertainment, in an educational RPG game to teach the fundamentals of Computer Programming that can be used on a Web-based platform and incorporated into parts of the Emergency Remote Education classes. An alpha version of the educational game was delivered, in Portuguese, and a subjective experiment was carried out with a sample of 14 IT students and the results of the article show that the reuse of the game was made directly and can be redistributed as an open educational resource form. © 2021 IEEE.
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Objectives: In Portugal, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, almost 1.4 million hospital consultations were not conducted at public hospitals and the number of surgeries was reduced by 40% in comparison with 2019. Local safety measures applied by hospitals reduced hospital capacity by 1/3. SimPLI - Simulating Capacity Performance Leading to Impact, a capacity simulator to test the effectiveness of measures to reduce the hospital backlog within capacity constraints, is hereby introduced. A proof of concept was presented for a hospital ophthalmology service. Methods: A spreadsheet-based simulator was developed for testing measures to accelerate the realization of delayed external consultations and outpatient surgeries. Inputs include the number of rooms and operation times, waiting room capacity, and allocation of healthcare professionals (HCP) to multiple roles. The impact of several measures was simulated namely the reorganization of HCP schedules and hiring, patient prioritization criteria, the specific allocation of rooms, and increasing teleconsultations. The baseline backlog is represented by the number of delayed procedures. The time to eliminate this backlog was calculated and compared with the output for scenarios where one or more measures were implemented. Results: The implementation of telemedicine for subsequent ophthalmology consultations and the reduction in 10 minutes in the time of face to face consultations would allow eliminating the consultations backlog in 9.3 months vs 16.7 months without any measures. Pertaining to surgeries, allocating an additional room for ophthalmology outpatient surgery and hiring a medical doctor were predicted to reduce the time to perform all backlog surgeries by four months (7.6 vs 11.3 months). Conclusions: SimPLI is invaluable for planning the investment in efficient actions towards optimization of hospital capacity in a post-COVID era in Portugal. The proof of concept demonstrates that the proposed measures could bring significant savings to the hospital by lowering the number of outsourced surgeries.
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Drawing on researches that diagnosis the experience of time in Late Capitalism the article focus on the themes of labor time and basic income, connecting them to the social and economic crises we live nowadays. Based on the analysis of these two related themes, I deal with the debate of these subjects from the 1970’s to the present moment. I argue here that the neoliberal option for a market fundamentalism lead to an increase in poverty and social inequality, situation aggravated by the actual Covid-19 Pandemic. In order to fight poverty and extreme social inequality, I conclude by proposing the adoption of a universal basic income, not only as an emergency measure during the Pandemic, but as a permanent strategy to protect the social tissue from the destructive effects of an uncontrolled widespread market logic on peoples’ life. © 2020, Universidade de Brasilia. All rights reserved.
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This study sought to explore the daily life of families with children aged 0-6 years old, living in Fortaleza, Ceara-Brazil, during the period of social distancing stipulated by the State Government. This qualitative research was conducted with data collected by means of video or phone interviews with thirty mothers, between July and August 2020. The empirical material was analyzed in the light of Bardin's content analysis, generating two thematic categories: (a) the exercise of parental care in Covid-19 times;and (2) the daily life of children in the face of the pandemic The narratives revealed that some caregivers tried to play games and practice an and crafts with. their children, besides explaining what was happening in the world scenario thus exercising positive parenting. Moreover, the social distancing measures promoted parental tolerance during the time children were exposed to screens, and parents showed to influence the practice of unhealthy eating habits and the manifestation of behavior changes in their children. These finding highlight the need for a continuous monitoring of aspects related to these children's development. as well as for their return to face-to-face activities.