Research on impacts of COVID-19 on students' clinical social work career determination in Taiwan

A quantitative method is adopted to survey 197 students at the department of social work at a university in Taiwan from April to May in 2020. The study aims to explore the impact of the new coronavirus on social work students' career determination. The result presents the participants with higher social loneliness have lower "Career Determination of Clinical Medical Social Work (CDCMSW)", and the mental burden feeling, and family relationship are predictive of the CDCMSW. © 2023 Author(s).

Robots or humans for disaster response? Impact on consumer prosociality and possible explanations

Hurricanes, wildfires, pandemics, and other disasters have taken millions of lives in the past few years and caused substantial economic losses. To tackle these extraordinary circumstances, governments, organizations, and companies seek assistance from both humans and high-technology machines such as robots. This research report documents how highlighting robots' (vs. humans') helping behaviors in disaster response can affect consumers' prosociality, explores driving mechanisms, and tests solutions. Study 1 found that consumers donated fewer items of clothing after watching news highlighting robots' (vs. humans') assistance in a mudslide disaster. Featuring the COVID-19 pandemic, Study 2 further showed that this decrease in prosociality occurred because reading about robots' assistance felt less encouraging/inspiring to consumers. Studies 3A-3C (and a supplemental study) explored multiple mechanisms and identified a key driver for the backfire effect—a lower perception of courage in disaster response robots. Accordingly, Study 4 tested three theory-driven solutions to raise the perceived courage in robots to increase consumer prosociality. © 2022 Society for Consumer Psychology.

Travel Mode Choice Analysis with Shared Mobility in Context of COVID-19

To analyze the impact of COVID-19 on the travel mode choice behavior with diverse shared mobility services, this study designed the stated preference (SP) questionnaire for the multi-modal transportation system which include conventional travel modes, ride hailing, ride sharing, car sharing, and bike sharing. The mixed Logit models with panel data were proposed to investigate the travel mode choices before and during COVID-19. The influence differences of explanatory variables are compared, and the joint effects of perceived pandemic severity and mode choice inertia are examined. Based on the elasticity analysis, the mode choice preferences are predicted corresponding to different management policies under COVID-19 pandemic. The results indicate that the perception to pandemic severity has significant impacts on the ridership of ride sharing and car sharing, and the mode choice inertia obviously affects the usage of ride hailing, car sharing, and bike sharing. When the perceived pandemic severity reduces to 30%~50%, the strategy of increasing parking charge to 1.6~3.0 times would reduce the usage of private car to pre-pandemic condition, and the car sharing with lower close contact risk could become a main substitute. When the perceived pandemic severity is higher than 60%, the strategy of increasing the travel safety of ride sharing to 1.4~3.6 times would improve the ridership. Copyright © 2022 by Science Press.

Opiate Use in Hospitalized Patients with IBD Can Be Significantly Reduced Using a Proactive Pain Protocol: Results of a Randomized Controlled Trial

INTRODUCTION: Hospitalized patients with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) are often treated with high doses of opioids, which can lead to opioid dependence, decreased quality of life, and increased mortality. We developed an evidence-based inpatient pain protocol for adults with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) comprised of scheduled acetaminophen, celecoxib, gabapentin, and as-needed lorazepam (Table 1). In this study, we compared this proactive pain protocol to usual care in a randomized control trial. METHODS: Hospitalized, nonpregnant adults with IBD with abdominal pain and without recent surgery were randomized to the proactive pain protocol or to a standard-of-care reactive pain regimen (as-needed acetaminophen and opioids). Outcomes included daily pain (assessed by numeric rating scores, 0-10), average daily morphine milligram equivalents (MME), length of stay (LOS), need for surgery during admission, and 30-day readmission rates. Intended sample size was 166 subjects, but enrollment was halted early due to lower than expected recruitment and COVID-19 research restrictions. Subjects were analyzed per-protocol. RESULTS: Thirty-three subjects were enrolled;1 withdrew consent and was excluded from analysis. Seventeen were randomized to the proactive protocol and 15 to the reactive regimen (control group). One subject in the control group received the proactive protocol. Baseline demographics, race, type of IBD, CRP, and reason for admission were similar between the two groups. There was a significant decrease in pain over time in both groups (22.8 ± 2.8 points, P < 0.0001). Overall, those receiving the proactive protocol had numerically lower pain scores over the course of hospitalization (3.02 ± 0.90 vs 4.29 ± 0.81, P = 0.059) (Figure 1) and consumed fewer daily MME than controls (13.94 ± 5.96 vs 37.26 ± 10.51, P = 0.02) (Figure 2). There were no differences in LOS (7.3 ± 6.6 vs 7.1 ± 3.5, P = 0.66), surgery during admission (11.1% vs 21.4%, P = 0.63), and readmission (11.1% vs 14.3%, P . 0.99) between the two groups. One subject had emesis after taking celecoxib which stopped after discontinuation;no other adverse events were noted. CONCLUSION: A proactive pain protocol reduces the use of opioids and may also improve overall pain control compared with a standard, reactive pain regimen in hospitalized patients with IBD. Proactive pain control with scheduled non-opioid pain medications should be considered for patients hospitalized with IBD to reduce reliance on opioids.