ABSTRACT
COVID-19 resulted in impacts across life experiences;this study focuses on impact on becoming a mother. People who were pregnant or gave birth in the US during the first year of the pandemic (April 2020-June 2021) were interviewed: six pregnant and 29 who had birthed. Interviews were analyzed using Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis. Themes included Missing Out Isolation, First-time Mom Experiences, Pervasive Uncertainty, and Depression. Subthemes were loss of celebration, missed events, somewhat helpful role of technology, less education and perinatal care, not having elder wisdom, COVID-specific anxiety, anxiety, and less postpartum support. Implications for research and practice are presented. © 2023 Taylor & Francis.
ABSTRACT
Background: Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has changed the inpatient practice of bacterial pneumonia. On hospitalization, isolation is required while waiting for the result of the PCR test, which may lead to limited access to medical resources and fewer rounds by medical staff. However, little is known about the relationship of isolation with the clinical outcomes of bacterial pneumonia. Here we hypothesized that isolation for COVID-19 suspected patients, who were eventually diagnosed with bacterial pneumonia, is associated with longer hospital stays, compared to no isolation. Method(s): This is a single center retrospective observational study of hospitalized adult patients diagnosed with bacterial pneumonia, from January 2018 to September 2021. The patients were divided into the non-isolated group (patients hospitalized between January 2018 to December 2019, who were not isolated at all), and the isolated group (patients hospitalized between January 2020 to September 2021, who were isolated because COVID-19 was suspected). The primary outcome was longer hospital stays (hospital stays >=14 days) and its relation to isolation was analyzed, using logistic regression analysis, adjusted for age, sex, the CURB-65, and the Charlsons Comorbidity Index. Result(s): Among 917 eligible patients, 214 (23%) underwent isolation. In logistic regression analysis, the isolated group resulted in independently longer hospital stays, compared to the non-isolated group (OR 1.49;95%CI 1.082.07, p=0.015). There was no significant difference in antibiotic duration between two groups. Conclusion(s): The isolation of bacterial pneumonia patients suspected of COVID-19 was associated with longer hospital stays.
ABSTRACT
To help second language (L2) learners acquire oral communication skills, dialogue-based computer-assisted language learning (DB-CALL) systems are attracting more interest than ever. When robot-assisted language learning (RALL) is used for realizing such systems, L2 learners are provided with a sense of reality and tension similar to that in a real L2 conversation. At the same time, there are increasing demands for remote learning, accelerated in part by the spread of the novel coronavirus. We have therefore developed a robot-avatar-assisted language learning system that simulates a trialogue in English with two robot avatars and a learner for remote learning. The conversation scenarios deal with various daily topics to keep the learner’s interest and the system prompts the learner to acquire oral skills by using specific syntactic forms in conversation. We conducted a six-day remote learning experiment with ten Japanese university students to evaluate the learning effect, using eye gaze as an index of the learners’ degree of concentration. Our findings demonstrated the effectiveness of our system for remote learning and showed that the learners’ eye gaze activities changed between question answering and repeating tasks. © 2021, Springer Nature Switzerland AG.