Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on training conditions and education in oncologic disciplines: a survey-based analysis

PURPOSE

The COVID-19 pandemic has led to changes in global health care. Medical societies had to update guidelines and enhance new services such as video consultations. Cancer treatment had to be modified. The aim of this study is to ensure optimal care for cancer patients with the help of high-quality training even in times of crisis. We therefore conducted a nationwide survey of physicians in training in oncological disciplines during the pandemic to assess the impact on their education.

METHODS

The survey was sent to tumour centres, hospitals, specialist societies, and working and junior research groups and distributed via newsletters and homepages. Interim results and a call for participation were published as a poster (DEGRO) [26] and in the German Cancer Society (DKG) journal FORUM [42]. The survey contained 53 questions on conditions of education and training and on clinical and scientific work. Statistics were carried out with LimeSurvey and SPSS (IBM Corp., Armonk, NY, USA).

RESULTS

Between February and November 2022, 450 participants answered the survey, with radio-oncologists being the largest group (28%). Most colleagues (63%) had access to digital training methods. Virtual sessions were rated as a good alternative, especially as multidisciplinary meetings (54%) as well as in-house and external training programs (48%, 47%). The time spent by training supervisors on education was rated as less than before the pandemic by 57%. Half of all participants perceived communication (54%), motivation (44%) and atmosphere (50%) in the team as bad. The participants felt strongly burdened by extra work (55%) and by a changed team atmosphere (49%). One third felt a change in the quality of training during the pandemic and rated it as negative (35%). According to 37% of the participants, this had little influence on their own quality of work. Additional subgroup analyses revealed significant differences in gender, specialty and education level.

CONCLUSION

In order to improve oncology training in times of crisis, access to digital training options and meetings should be ensured. Participants wish for regular team meetings in person to enable good team spirit, compensation for overtime work and sufficient time for training supervisors for discussion and feedback.

How education and GDP drive the COVID-19 vaccination campaign

BACKGROUND

Since vaccination is the decisive factor for controlling the COVID-19 pandemic, it is important to understand the process of vaccination success which is not well understood on a global level. The study is the first to judge the now completed "first wave" of the vaccination efforts. The analysis is very relevant for the understanding why and where the vaccination process observed got stuck by the end of 2021.

METHODS

Using data from 118 countries globally and weighted least squared and survival analysis, we identify a variety of factors playing crucial roles, including the availability of vaccines, pandemic pressures, economic strength measured by Gross Domestic Product (GDP), educational development, and political regimes.

RESULTS

Examining the speed of vaccinations across countries until the Fall of 2021 when the global process got stuck, we find that initially authoritarian countries are slow in the vaccination process, while education is most relevant for scaling up the campaign, and the economic strength of the economies drives them to higher vaccination rates. In comparison to North and Middle America, European and Asian countries vaccinated initially fast for 5% and 10% vaccination rate thresholds, but became rather slow reaching the 30% vaccination level and above. The findings are robust to various applied estimation methods and model specifications.

CONCLUSIONS

Democratic countries are much faster than authoritarian countries in their vaccination campaigns when controlling for other factors. This finding suggests that the quality of government and the political environment play a key role in popular support for government policies and programs. However, despite the early success of their vaccination campaigns, the democratic country group has been confronted with strong concerns of vaccine reluctance among their vast populations, indicating the two most potent variables explaining the speed of the COVID-19 vaccination campaign are education and economic conditions.

The situational analysis of teaching-learning in clinical education in Iran: a postmodern grounded theory study

BACKGROUND

Clinical teaching-learning is a context-bound phenomenon. One of the problems related to field of medical education research is the lack of sufficient attention to context-appropriate methodologies. The purpose of this qualitative inquiry is to explain and represent teaching-learning in the clinical education of general medicine in Iran using the three types of maps situational, social worlds/arenas, positional, in combination with discourse analysis.

METHODS

In this study, the authors used the situational analysis approach as a postmodern version of grounded theory. The data collection was undertaken in three stages. In the first stage, a mini literature review was conducted to highlight a possible gap in applying situational analysis in medical education research and the development of this methodology. In the second stage, the latest and most up-to-date documents of the Ministry of Health and Medical Education (MOHME) of Iran, the general medicine curriculum, and related documents were analyzed. Finally, the remote semi-structured interviews (web-based and telephone) were undertaken in the third stage. Participants in this stage included expert clinical teachers, medical education specialists, and students. In this study, the notes and transcripts were analyzed for the emergence and categorization of sub-themes and themes, represented in three maps.

RESULTS

Thirty-one participants were involved in the web-based interviews, while seven participants took part in the telephone interview. Based on this research, the teaching-learning situation in clinical education on general medicine in Iran was represented in three maps; situational, social worlds/arenas, and positional. In addition, the results showed, clinical education of general medicine in Iran in six positions (curriculum; culture, behavior and attitude; management and leadership; environment, space and time; financial; and technology) has serious problems and challenges. Finally, based on the horizontal axis of the positional map, recommendations were provided to develop and support effective clinical teaching.

CONCLUSIONS

The clinical learning environment is a complex and multi-layered social environment in which should be considered these numerous social layers, arenas, social worlds, and discourses while developing curricula and teaching.

Dynamic transparency in design: the revival of environmental sustainability in design elements of Iraqi buildings

Buildings in Iraqi cities such as Baghdad and Mosul suffer from several problems such as the application of new materials in modern buildings that changed not just the identity of architectural heritage but also the quality of thermal comfort in façade design. This, unfortunately, adds to the damage regarding environmental sustainability and cultural values away from adaptable solutions to improve energy efficiency in building performance. One of the measures that must be taken to correctly plan in harmony with the Iraqi cities is to ensure the environmental control as part of the overall performance of building façade to maintain an active, healthy indoor environment while preserving the propriety of facade design elements, screen pattern, order and details. Therefore, there are many sustainable trends that vary in their usefulness such as biomimetics examples inspired from natural models in which form and function dictate one another. This is in order to maintain the integrated design relation between transparency, function, and elegance in the overall performance of façade elements. The research question is, how important is the choice of material in developing a sustainable element that revives environmental control while preserving the identity and values of façade design? The main goal of the research study is to identify the role of advanced technologies and the choice of smart glazing materials to revive the quality of thermal comfort in a way that not just sustains the identity of facade elements socially and culturally, but also to be responsive to the changes of climate conditions. Therefore, this research utilizes more than one technological tool such as Revit as a BIM tool with the application of smart dynamic materials such as Photovoltaics and Electrochromic in order to restore part of the design expression and enhance the building performance through its elements in contemporary façade design and its details. In this work, it can be seen that applying a set of technological tools allows to clearly illustrate the impact of smart dynamic materials to improve the quality of design and comfort while protecting the identity of contemporary façade elements when compared to static or traditional materials, aesthetically, and functionally.

Top business schools legitimacy quest through the Sustainable Development Goals

An organization acquires legitimacy when it operates in an appropriate and desirable manner, satisfying the stakeholders' needs and expectations. Stakeholders claim to business schools sustainable and responsible management, knowledge transfer and research. In the last years, business schools adopted Corporate Social Responsibility as guideline of an integrated and holistic approach for their legitimation process. The aim of this research is to understand how business schools are reacting to the criticism that affects them and how they are reshaping their strategies in order to fulfill stakeholders' expectations, and to confirm which UN Sustainable Development Goals are the most cited in the sustainability reports of the best business schools in the world. We perform a content analysis of the latest sustainability reports published by the top 50 business schools, analyzing the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals. We highlight that business schools focus social responsibility strategies mainly to define the professional standards to train future leaders qualified to manage organizations with a social, economic and environmental positive impact for all the stakeholders and capable to shape a better world.

A meta-analysis of single-subject reading intervention studies for struggling readers: using Improvement Rate Difference (IRD)

The purpose of this study is to examine and identify effective variables related to single-subject reading interventions for the struggling readers. This study conducted meta-analysis of 84 single-subject research articles of which 54 were published in Korean and 30 were published in English. Utilizing the Improvement Rate Difference (IRD), a total of 586 effect sizes were produced with the mean effect size of 0.77. Intervention variables were categorized into two types – participant-related and intervention-related variables. Collected studies were analyzed for each effect size calculation. Variables having large effects within grade levels, disability types, implementer and session duration are discerned along with further discussion and educational implications.

Internationalization of higher education in the crucible: Linking national identity and policy in the age of globalization

Nationalism's rise represents a potential harbinger of doom for the internationalization of higher education (IoHE). Space exists for research to amplify our understanding of the interplay between internationalization and nationalism from a public policy theory perspective. The study identified and classified policies and policy ideas pertinent to IoHE, and furthermore, explored how political rivalries in Taiwan have influenced IoHE's development under globalization. Analysis of documentary data from an online national database reveals how IoHE policy changes reflect the machinations of political actors to advance domestic political agendas and provoke controversy. The advocacy coalition framework informs our explanation of how the aforementioned changes reflect Taiwan's inward-looking political climate, unique geopolitical circumstances, and longstanding controversy over national identity. The paper discusses the implications of context for IoHE development across three consecutive government regimes to provide insights for further comparisons with other localities and contexts.

K-12 art teacher technology use and preparation

Largely absent from educational/instructional technology journals, this study focused on how K-12 art teachers in a southern state used technology to support teaching and learning, uses they found to be the best, and what kinds of technology training they received as part of their initial teacher preparation. Findings indicated that presentation and resource access technologies had transformed the way art teachers in the study work with students and materials. They also had little use of technology to support students with special needs and had limited technology experiences in their own training. Elementary art teachers were found to have more examples of student higher-order thinking skills promoting technology use, while secondary art teachers had more student media creation and a desire to implement digital portfolios. Additional findings and interpretations are offered.

Okay, let's talk - short debriefings in the operating room

INTRODUCTION

Debriefing is increasingly used to enhance learning and reflection in clinical practice. Nevertheless, barriers to implementing debriefings in the operating room (OR) include lack of time, the availability of trained facilitators, and difficulty gathering the full team after surgery. Spending five minutes on a debriefing during skin closure or between procedures may enhance learning and reflection on practice, generating to improve patient safety. The aim of this study was to explore characteristics, feasibility and content of short debriefings in the OR.

METHODS

This was a mixed-method study of short debriefings, analyzing audio-recordings, field notes and relevance ratings from multi-professional teams, that conducted short debriefings in the OR at two University Hospitals in Denmark.

RESULTS

A total of 135 debriefings were conducted, with a median duration of five minutes (range 1:19 min-12:05 min). A total of 477 team members participated in the debriefings. The teams' median rating of relevance was 6 (range 1-10). The rating was higher following challenging events and in debriefings where the surgeon actively participated in the conversation. The teams discussed non-technical skills in all the debriefings and verbalized reflections on practice in 75 percent of the debriefings.

CONCLUSION

It was feasible to conduct short debriefings in a production-focused, complex work environment. In all the debriefings, the teams discussed various non-technical skills (NTS) and reflected on practice. The majority of team members rated the debriefings as relevant for their task management.

Individual differences in visualization and childhood play preferences

Our research explored the structure of childhood visual play preferences, and examined different types of visual play in relation to individual differences in visualization and aptitudes in academic specializations requiring visualization skills. Principal component analysis dissociated visual-object play (e.g., exploring drawing media or decorative crafts) from visual-spatial play (e.g., assembling and disassembling mechanisms or playing with construction toys) preferences. Moreover, visual play preferences were dissociated from verbal play preferences (e.g., vocabulary games or making up stories). The structure of visual play preferences was consistent with object and spatial dimensions of individual differences in visualization. Visual-object and visual-spatial dimensions of play preferences were differentially related to measures of object visualization (processing pictorial appearances in terms of shape, texture, and color) versus spatial visualization (processing spatial relationships and spatial manipulations), as well as to aptitudes in artistic versus scientific domains. Furthermore, our research sheds new light on sex differences in play behavior: Previous studies commonly associated gender-specific play with visual versus verbal-social processing; our research demonstrated sex differences in play preferences across the two dimensions of visual play, where females preferred visual-object and males preferred visual-spatial play. Moreover, we found the object vs. spatial structure of visual play preferences was largely the same in both sexes, suggesting that differences in visual play preferences cannot be reduced to sex differences. Also, our questionnaire assessing visual-object, visual-spatial and verbal play preferences, developed for research purposes, demonstrated good reliability. Its two scales, assessing visual-object and visual-spatial play preferences, discriminatively correlated with assessments of individual differences in object and spatial visualization, respectively. This research creates a basis for further creation of comprehensive measures of visual play preferences, and should stimulate future studies examining visual play preferences and how they may create developmental opportunities for skills and preferences lasting into adulthood.

Assessment of nutrition and learning skills in children aged 5-11 years old from two elementary schools in Chocó, Colombia

Background

Malnutrition has been identified as a factor in growth and learning. The current study aimed to determine the nutritional status and basic learning skills of children from Chocó, Colombia.

Methods

We conducted a cross-sectional study of 631 children aged 5-11 years from two schools, collecting anthropometric measurements, nutritional quality surveys and sociodemographic data. Neuropsychological batteries were applied.

Results

A total of 523 children were evaluated, with an average age of 8.49 ± 2.1 years. The results revealed that 2.9% of children were underweight, 0.4% were severely underweight, and 4.8% were diagnosed as having stunted growth. In addition, 71.8% of children were unable to draw a human figure. Beery-Buktenica Visual-Motor Integration test (VMI) performance was below the scores expected for these age groups in 73.9% of children. Battery of Differential and General Abilities (BADYG) performance revealed limited verbal skills. In a subsample of 117 children, anemia was detected in 12.8% of cases, and iron deficiency was present in 44.4% of cases. Global malnutrition was associated with impairments in BADYG performance (OR: 1.98; 95% CI: 1.07-3.86).

Conclusions

The current results revealed that learning performance was below the expected level for children in these age groups across all of the applied tests. Although malnutrition could partially explain the poor performance of children in tests of learning abilities, additional factors are likely to be involved.

Effects of a vocational program on professional orientation

Students that enroll in a vocational orientation program develop an early interest in the profession. Their involvement generates a higher sense of personal wellbeing, as well as positive academic and professional outcomes. A program was developed for high school students to experience first-hand what it means to work on health sciences. Two years after, the effects of the vocational program were assessed to analyze students’ motivation and satisfaction with their professional orientation.

Skills in computational thinking of engineering students of the first school year

In this world of the digital era, in which we are living, one of the fundamental competences that students must acquire is the competence in Computational Thinking (CT). Although there is no general consensus on a formal definition, there is a general understanding of it as a set of skills and attitudes necessary for the resolution, with or without a computer, of problems that may arise in any area of life. Measuring and evaluating which of the CT skills students have acquired is fundamental, and for this purpose, previously validated measuring instruments must be used. In this study, a previously validated instrument is applied to know if the new students in the Engineering Degrees of the University of the Basque Country have the following skills in CT: Critical Thinking, Algorithmic Thinking, Problem Solving, Cooperativity and Creativity.

Senior nursing student's perceptions of an interprofessional simulation-based education (IPSE): A qualitative study

Purpose

The purpose of this study was to explore the perceptions and attitudes toward interprofessional simulation-based education among Lebanese senior nursing students.

Methods

The study used an exploratory descriptive qualitative approach and collected data through focus groups. All focus group discussions were audiotaped, transcribed verbatim, and narratives were compared with the recordings to establish accuracy, credibility and reliability of data. Qualitative narratives were translated to English and analyzed through an inductive thematic content analysis. This study was reported according to the Standards for Reporting Qualitative Research (SRQR).

Results

Four major themes were identified: understanding roles and responsibilities, enhancing collaboration, improve personal and interpersonal skills, and patient outcomes.

Conclusion

The senior nursing students showed a positive perception and attitude toward interprofessional simulation-based education. They found that interprofessional simulation-based education increased their knowledge and understanding of the importance of the roles of other professions, as well as their own role in providing patient care. Furthermore, they perceived that interprofessional simulation-based education improved their personal and interpersonal skills. These positive findings may contribute to their future success in an interprofessional team, which could lead to improved patient outcomes. Therefore, future research is needed to see how the reported benefits of interprofessional simulation-based education training are reflected in clinical practice and related to patient outcomes.

Contradictions in clinical teachers' engagement in educational development: an activity theory analysis

Many medical universities offer educational development activities to support clinical teachers in their teaching role. Research has focused on the scope and effectiveness of such activities and on why individual teachers attend. However, systemic perspectives that go beyond a focus on individual participants are scarce in the existing literature. Employing activity theory, we explored how clinical teachers' engagement in educational development was affected by the systems they act within. Three focus groups were held with clinical teachers from different professions. A thematic analysis was used to map the contradictions between the systems that the participants were part of and the manifestations of these contradictions in the system of education. In our model, clinical teachers were part of three activity systems directed by the objects of patient care, research and education respectively. Contradictions arose between these systems as their objects were not aligned. This manifested through the enacted values of the academic hospital, difficulties establishing educational discussions in the clinical workplace, the transient nature of educational employments, and impediments to developing a teacher identity. These findings offer insights into the complexities of engaging in educational development as clinical teachers' priorities interact with the practices and values of the academic hospital, suggesting that attention needs to shift from individual teachers to developing the systems in which they work.

Ethically scaling up interventions in educational development:case for collaborative multi-sited ethnographic research

Educational interventions are often administered at scale in diverse settings as part of international development programmes. Their implementation is subject to a linear process that begins with finding out 'what works' at a local level, frequently through the use of randomised controlled trials, and continues with rolling out the intervention to the whole population at a national or even transnational level. This process often fails to consider the role cultural, political, and historical factors play in the perceived success of the local intervention, which can compromise both the impact and the ethics of at-scale implementation. To help address this issue, this paper argues for a definition of scalability that incorporates the ethics of the practice of scaling. It points to the potential of collaborative multi-sited ethnographic research to identify nuanced understandings of the different ethics systems endogenous to individual sites of implementation, in lieu of the universalising notions of ethics that are embedded in mainstream, linear notions of scalability. In so doing, it makes the case for multi-sited critical ethnography as a methodology of choice in researching the scalability of interventions in the context of development projects in the 'Global South'.