ABSTRACT
The COVID-19 pandemic has promoted the development of online teaching in various educational institutions. Different online teaching practice has shown advantages and potential problems. The combination of online and offline teaching (mixed teaching) is a new teaching practice that can exert its advantages simultaneously, and has been wildly used during the COVID-19 pandemic, even being extended to the post-pandemic era. Medical parasitology is a foundation course for medicine and a bridging course towards clinical medicine and preventive medicine. The traditional teaching of medical parasitology has presented many limitations, including outdated teaching concepts and practices, and the disconnection between theory teaching and practice teaching. In response to these difficulties, many innovative ideas and measures have been taken o reform the teaching practice of the foundation medical courses, including updating teaching program, adopting innovative teaching practice (such as blended teaching), and promoting the teaching evaluation method. In this paper, we concluded the blended teaching tools, platforms, manners, effects and evaluation methods in medical parasitology in China during the COVID-19 pandemic to provide information for the teaching reform in the post-pandemic era.Copyright © 2022, National Institute of Parasitic Diseases. All rights reserved.
ABSTRACT
Individuals may experience positive changes or gain growths after struggling with traumas or challenging circumstances such as the COVID-19 pandemic. This study aimed to assess potential levels of posttraumatic growth (PTG) of the general public during the COVID-19 pandemic and PTG's associations with perceptions of transformational leadership in local government and public trust. The data of a probability sample of 1011 community-dwelling adults (61.2% females;Mean age = 41.2 years, SD = 15.8) in Macao, China, were collected via a telephone poll survey. Multiple regression analyses were conducted and a bootstrapping approach was utilized to test the hypothesized moderating effects and mediating effects of trust in local government on the association between perceived transformational leadership and PTG, respectively. Results showed that about half of the respondents reported at least a medium level of PTG. Whereas perceived transformational leadership in the Macao local government was positively associated with four individual aspects of PTG (i.e., appreciation of life, new possibilities, personal strength, and relating to others) as well as the overall PTG, while controlling for the demographic variables, trust in the local government showed no moderating or mediating effects in these associations. Our findings suggest the value of governments' transformational leadership in promoting people's PTG in the face of public crises such as COVID-19. More transformational leadership behaviors, such as attending to citizens' personal needs and conveying an inspirational vision, in government are called for to bring about greater positive responses from individuals and ensure social vitality and resilience during this long-term public health battle. © The Author(s) 2023.
ABSTRACT
Facing the challenge of COVID-19 pandemic, online education rapidly occupied the daily teaching in China, which promoted the development of "Online+Offline"(blended) teaching. Medical Parasitology majorly aims to cultivate students' basic knowledge of Parasitology and the ability of "diagnosis and control of parasitic diseases". The Massive Online Open Course (MOOC), intelligent teaching software and Parasitology multimedia laboratory are used for blended teaching. Theoretical teaching includes intensive lectures, self-learning and flipped classrooms. Practices are taught in blended manner. The most representative means is the flipped classroom integrating learning with application through "case discussion - laboratory examination - uploading diagnosis basis on line - group report for peer learning". An evaluation combining formative and summative evaluation, online and offline assessment is jointly applied. We selected Clinic Medicine major as the experimental group, the Basic Medicine, Medical Experimental Technology and Biotechnology majors as the control group. The experimental group was taught in the blended teaching mode of "combining virtuality with reality, learning with application";and the control group was taught in the traditional mode of lectures in big group and practices in small groups. The scores of the final computer test and the final offline experimental test were used in comparison. The experiment and theory scores of the experimental group are both significantly higher than that of the control group. The blended teaching is highly recognized by our students, and the teaching mode has been widely demonstrated and recommended to other courses in and out of the university. This mode comprehensively cultivated students' basic knowledge of Parasitology, and the ability of diagnosis and control of parasitic diseases. This blended teaching mode of "combining virtuality with reality, learning with application"effectively improved students' academic performance and application abilities, and well cultivated students' thinking of diagnosis and control of parasitic diseases. © 2022 ACM.
ABSTRACT
The COVID-19 pandemic has promoted the development of online teaching in various educational institutions. Different online teaching practice has shown advantages and potential problems. The combination of online and offline teaching (mixed teaching) is a new teaching practice that can exert its advantages simultaneously, and has been wildly used during the COVID-19 pandemic, even being extended to the post-pandemic era. Medical parasitology is a foundation course for medicine and a bridging course towards clinical medicine and preventive medicine. The traditional teaching of medical parasitology has presented many limitations, including outdated teaching concepts and practices, and the disconnection between theory teaching and practice teaching. In response to these difficulties, many innovative ideas and measures have been taken o reform the teaching practice of the foundation medical courses, including updating teaching program, adopting innovative teaching practice (such as blended teaching), and promoting the teaching evaluation method. In this paper, we concluded the blended teaching tools, platforms, manners, effects and evaluation methods in medical parasitology in China during the COVID-19 pandemic to provide information for the teaching reform in the post-pandemic era. © 2022, National Institute of Parasitic Diseases. All rights reserved.
ABSTRACT
Background and objectives: Travel history has become an indispensable part of emergency department (ED) patient assessment due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. The ability to highlight travel from free text notes may augment travel history that is not completely captured in structured data fields. We explore if named-entity recognition (NER), a natural language processing (NLP) technique, can be used to extract travel history from ED free text triage notes (FTN) using a widely available, off-the-shelf, open-source NLP tool. Methods: The FTN of 10,000 attendances at an ED were reviewed by a team of annotators, and the countries, regions, or cities of travel were extracted. The annotated notes were used to train the native, out-of-the-box NER model in SpaCy 3.0.5, which is based on a deep convolutional neural network. Predictions made by the trained model were evaluated on a previously unseen test set. Results: The NER model achieved F1 score of 97.64%, precision of 98.68%, and recall of 96.6% in capturing travel history. Conclusion: Machine learning can be used to accurately capture travel history from ED FTN.
ABSTRACT
Community care and telehealth are brotherly strategies to manage global health care challenges and to help sustain health care systems. Community care as a complementary alternative to hospital care has been supported notably by a wealth of literature for its impacts on health care, whereas telehealth in its broader definition brings innovative modes of care by breaking both territorial and clinical boundaries and it has been growing internationally with a glittering financial outlook. Alongside the rapid proliferated advancements of information and communication technology, in particular the extensive penetration of smartphones in day-to-day living since the last decade and the emergence of artificial intelligence as a tool for health care, it has become more and more ‘trendy’ in community care to use telehealth applications for clinical purposes. The COVID-19 pandemic has further catalysed the growth of telehealth at the community level. That said, telehealth is not legal-risk free. In this chapter, the author discusses potential medico-legal risks and other operational concerns inherent in telehealth applications for community care, with an attempt to provide some references for health care practitioners and institutes to facilitate their better planning in the use of telehealth in the context of community care. © 2022 selection and editorial matter, Ben Y.F. Fong and Martin C.S. Wong;individual chapters, the contributors.
ABSTRACT
Background: Appropriate human resources interventions to address healthcare workers’ concerns are key to maintaining confidence and morale of staff to combat a pandemic in any healthcare system. The objectives of this study are to analyze concerns of healthcare workers in public hospitals during the initial 3 months, throughout which the Hong Kong Hospital Authority implemented multiple measures to address staff needs. Methods: A retrospective study analyzing the immediate and longitudinal concerns of healthcare workers during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. All enquiries by unsolicited phone calls and WhatsApp messages raised over a 12-week period from 29/1/2020 to 22/4/2020 were reviewed and categorized. Thematic analysis of the enquiries was conducted, together with timing and frequency of enquiry categories. Results: A total of 1,868 enquiries were raised over the 12-week period. These enquiries comprised 740 (40%) in “recognition and staff wellbeing”, 573 (31%) in “infection control”, 357 (19%) in “duty arrangement” and the remaining 196 (10%) “others”. Conclusions: Spikes spread over the 12 weeks of data capture demonstrated major concern areas for a healthcare system in maintaining the morale and confidence of staff. Financial incentives introduced during the pandemic may have drawbacks around equity, defining thresholds for payments and setting precedence. A Human Resources App and e-bulletins were effective in rapidly communicating information to staff and allaying their fears, especially during the initial phase of the crisis. Further study of financial incentives to help decision-makers understand the impact and consequences of such approaches should be undertaken. © Journal of Hospital Management and Health Policy. All rights reserved.
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Background: A need arose to divert patients with psychiatric complaints from the emergency department to alternative settings for psychiatric consultations to reduce footfall during COVID-19. We assessed the effectiveness of alternative referral pathway in reducing COVID-19 infection in our service and its effect on service quality: response time and number of patients leaving before the review. We evaluated the satisfaction of patients, general practitioners (GPs) and mental health service staff with the pathway. Methods: All patients referred to the mental health service over a 2-month period following the introduction of the pathway were included. Findings were compared against the cohort referred for emergency assessment during the same period in 2019. Feedback surveys were distributed to patients, staff and GPs. χ2 and independent sample t-test were used to compare the variables. Results: Over 2 months, 255 patients received an emergency assessment via the pathway, representing a 22.3% decrease in the volume of presentations from the same period in 2019. There were no COVID-19 cases among our patients or staff on the roster for assessing patients. In comparison to 2019, response times were improved (p<0.001), and the numbers of patients who left the hospital before the review were reduced by 3.2% during the study period (p<0.001). Patients and GPs were highly satisfied with the referral pathway and believed that the pathway should be retained post-COVID-19. Mental health service staff were divided in their opinions about its sustainability. Conclusion: The pathway was successful in reducing the spread of infection, improving response times and reducing the numbers of patients who left without an assessment. Given the improved outcomes and acceptability, this is a preferable pathway for emergency referrals into the future. © Author(s) (or their employer(s)) 2021. No commercial re-use. See rights and permissions. Published by BMJ.
ABSTRACT
OBJECTIVES: This study aimed to assess the impact of COVID-19 on presentations to an acute hospital with self-harm. METHODS: All presentations to University Hospital Galway with self-harm were assessed during the peak period of the coronavirus crisis in Ireland, over the 3 months from 1 March to 31 May 2020. These data were compared with presentations in the same months in the 3 years preceding (2017-2019). Data were obtained from the anonymised service database. RESULTS: This study found that in 2020, the rate of presentation with self-harm dropped by 35% from March to April and rose by 104% from April to May, peaking from mid-May. When trends over a 4-year period were examined, there was a significantly higher lethality of attempt (p < 0.001), and significant differences in diagnosis (p = 0.031) in 2020 in comparison with the three previous years. The increased lethality of presentations remained significant after age and gender were controlled for (p = 0.036). There were also significant differences in the underlying psychiatric diagnoses (p = 0.018), notably with a significant increase in substance misuse disorders presenting during the 2020 study period. CONCLUSIONS: COVID-19 showed a reduction in self-harm presentations initially, followed by a sharp increase in May 2020. If a period of economic instability follows as predicted, it is likely that this will further impact the mental health of the population, along with rates of self-harm and suicidal behaviours. There is a need for research into the longer-term effect of COVID-19 and lockdown restrictions, especially with respect to self-harm.