Dense Feature Memory Augmented Transformers for COVID-19 Vaccination Search Classification

With the devastating outbreak of COVID-19, vaccines are one of the crucial lines of defense against mass infection in this global pandemic. Given the protection they provide, vaccines are becoming mandatory in certain social and professional settings. This paper presents a classification model for detecting COVID-19 vaccination related search queries, a machine learning model that is used to generate search insights for COVID-19 vaccinations. The proposed method combines and leverages advancements from modern state-of-the-art (SOTA) natural language understanding (NLU) techniques such as pretrained Transformers with traditional dense features. We propose a novel approach of considering dense features as memory tokens that the model can attend to. We show that this new modeling approach enables a significant improvement to the Vaccine Search Insights (VSI) task, improving a strong well-established gradient-boosting baseline by relative +15% improvement in F1 score and +14% in precision. © 2022 Association for Computational Linguistics.

Disrupting the disruption: Using digital tools to support psychiatry residency training in Singapore during the COVID-19 pandemic

This letter discusses the use of digital tools to support psychiatry residency training in Singapore during the COVID-19 pandemic. The National Psychiatry Residency Program is a five-year program accredited by the US Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education-International (ACGME-I) and Joint Committee on Specialty Training (JCST), Singapore. The pandemic infection control measures, including social distancing and cross hospital movement restrictions, have created unprecedented challenges to training. Psychiatry residents cannot meet in groups, go outside of their current sites to do clinical work or attend educational activities, and ambulatory teams have halted home visits and day treatment programs. However, in the process, other clinical learning opportunities have unexpectedly arisen. To help with shifting demands, some psychiatry residents have been assigned to different services than the ones belonging to their rotations. Several residents have volunteered for deployment to medical facilities which are set up in the community, and are assisting medical teams in managing clinically ill patients. There are ongoing discussions between the residency program committee, central educational office and health authorities to ensure that requisite training rotations are being fulfilled as best as possible at the respective training sites. Although the disruption to psychiatry residency training in the midst of the pandemic is severe, the innovative use of digital platforms is coming of age. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved)

Radiography education in 2022 and beyond - Writing the history of the present: A narrative review.

OBJECTIVES: The COVID-19 pandemic had a major effect on teaching and learning. This study aimed to describe a range of teaching, learning, and assessment strategies related to radiography education which have become more common due to the pandemic through a narrative literature review. KEY FINDINGS: Educational change in radiography was accelerated by the disruption caused by the pandemic. Changes included the site and mode of teaching and conducting of assessment. While some of the digital transformation trends were introduced before the pandemic, others were further amplified during this period of time. Alternative solutions such as virtual reality technology, gamification, and technology-enhanced learning were especially salient and have the potential to mitigate challenges brought about by the pandemic. The use of technology in the clinical setting, in assessment, and to facilitate feedback, are important tools for improving learners' clinical skills performance. Collectively, these digital technologies can maximise learning and support mastery of knowledge, skills and attitudes. CONCLUSION: The pandemic has cast a new light on existing methodologies and pedagogies in education. This review suggests that digital technology is shaping teaching and learning within radiography education and also that educators cannot ignore this digital shift. With the digital trajectory, it would be highly useful to transform approaches to education within radiography to support learning as radiography education moves towards the new normal era. IMPLICATIONS FOR PRACTICE: Digital technology in education can help improve the learning experience for learners but educators need to be equipped with the technological skills and be adaptable to these changes. Continual sharing of experiences and knowledge among radiography educators is essential. Safety nets need to be in place to ensure digital inclusiveness and that no learner gets left behind due to the digital divide in education.