Background:
To achieve herd immunity, the acceptance of the COVID-19 vaccine by the population, especially healthcare professionals, plays a key role. The objective of the present paper is to address ...the differences in attitudes among Spanish healthcare professionals compared with the general population regarding COVID-19 vaccination.
Methods:
This cross-sectional study included data from 2,136 adults (
n
= 664 healthcare professionals) from an online survey conducted from May 6 to June 9, 2021. The Vaccination attitudes examination scale was used to measure the negative attitudes toward vaccines. Four subscales: mistrust of vaccine benefit, worries about the unforeseen future effect, concerns about commercial profiteering, and preference for natural immunity were calculated. Generalized linear mixed models were conducted to study these associations.
Results:
Between 10.2 and 22.6% of the subjects showed high levels of negative attitudes toward vaccines. However, only 1.5% of our sample (2.1% among healthcare professionals) refused to get the COVID-19 vaccine when it was offered because they chose otherwise. Retired people showed the lowest concerns and the highest trust in vaccines. No statistically significant effects were found between working in a healthcare field and having higher positive attitudes toward vaccines.
Conclusion:
Low levels of rejection against the COVID-19 vaccine were identified in the present sample. However, despite being at a higher risk, health care professionals did not show higher positive attitudes toward vaccines. Furthermore, refusal percentage to vaccination was higher among healthcare professionals compared with non-healthcare professionals. Developing a strategy to increase positive attitudes against the COVID-19 vaccine should be an objective for public health policy.
The right to die is an international dilemma. Some countries and states already have laws regulating one of the most common applications of this right, the active voluntary euthanasia. The evidence ...from these countries highlights the importance of a bioethical framework to limit some of its applications. In this regard, the evaluation of attitudes towards euthanasia in medical personnel will allow to understand the attitudes of these professionals and how they can deal with such requests, whether this assisted death is decided by the patients or their surroundings. Consequently, the aim of this study was to develop a brief scale to evaluate attitudes, as well as to determine their significance according to the gender and seniority of the professionals in this situation. A double design strategy was followed. On the one hand, a psychometric design with an exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis and, on the other, a descriptive analytical design for the comparison of groups. A six-item scale (AE-PM) and two factors were extracted. The first focuses on attitudes towards euthanasia to alleviate suffering for medical reasons and the second one to alleviate the patient’s emotional suffering. The scale (AHE-PM) is useful for the rapid exploration of attitudes towards euthanasia in physicians, a professional group with limited free time, who may also encounter relatively frequent requests for active voluntary euthanasia. The two factors obtained allow attitudes to be assessed from a bioethical perspective, providing information on the application under apparent medical justification and in situations based on the patient’s subjective emotional suffering.
COVID-19 vaccines have shown high efficacy, with most side effects being mild–moderate and more frequently reported by females and people at younger ages. Since no studies have assessed the impact ...that weight status could have on the reported adverse reactions, we aim to study the association between weight status and reported side effects. We included data on 2136 adults from an online survey conducted from 6 May to 9 June 2021. The questionnaire was filled in by participants over Google forms. Generalized Linear Mixed Models were used. A higher risk of presenting fever ≥38°, vomiting, diarrhea and chills was found in those with a non-overweight status compared to those overweight after adjusting for age, sex, education, medication to prevent/relieve post-vaccination effects and vaccine administered. When adjusting, most of the significant effects, in the association between side effects of the COVID-19 vaccine and weight status, did not remain significant. In conclusion, a non-overweight status was associated with a higher risk of presenting fever ≥38°, vomiting, diarrhea and chills compared to those overweight. Nevertheless, most of the reported side effects to COVID-19 vaccine were not associated with a higher risk of presenting more adverse effects, and individual differences were determined by sex and age.
Workplace violence in healthcare settings has long been studied in scientific literature, particularly in the nursing profession. Research has explored mostly user violence probably for its high ...prevalence and impact on health and job satisfaction. Yet this focus may overshadow another dangerous type of workplace violence: coworker violence. Exerted by co-workers with similar status, lateral violence differs from that yielded by a co-worker with a higher rank, known as vertical. This study aims to deepen the knowledge about lateral violence perceived by nurses and its interaction with other variables commonly associated with workplace violence in healthcare: burnout, job satisfaction, and self-perceived health.
A random block sampling was performed, prompting a total sample of 925 nursing professionals from 13 public hospitals located in the southeast of Spain. The sample distribution (mean and standard deviation) and the response percentages according to the study variables of the ad-hoc questionnaire were analyzed and classified with cluster analysis.
Through the cluster analysis, two subgroups were obtained: Cluster 1, composed of 779 participants, with low scores in the variables used for the classification, high levels of both extrinsic and intrinsic satisfaction, low levels of emotional exhaustion and cynicism, and low rates of somatization, anxiety, social dysfunction and depression; and Cluster 2, composed of 115 participants and characterized by moderate-high scores in the variables used for the classification, moderate extrinsic satisfaction, and low intrinsic satisfaction, high emotional exhaustion and cynicism and lower somatization, anxiety, social dysfunction, and depression scores. Excluded cases amounted to 31.
Nursing professionals who experience lateral violence reveal a lower intrinsic satisfaction, feeling less self-accomplished in their job, and less positive work experience. Emotional exhaustion rises as a concerning progressive and long-term outcome of experiencing this type of violence.
•A GC–MS procedure for determination of antidepressants in human ribs is described.•It is validated and successfully applied to bone samples from forensic cases.•Duloxetine, velafaxine and ...amitriptyline are detected in human ribs.•Postmortem toxicological analyses in human ribs are useful in forensic medicine.
A method based on gas chromatography–mass spectrometry (GC–MS) is described for the determination of venlafaxine, amitriptyline and duloxetine in human bone. Pulverized samples were incubated in methanol for 1 h under ultrasonication, after the addition of sertraline as internal standard. The samples were centrifuged, and the supernatants were evaporated. Samples were then resuspended in 0.1 M phosphate buffer pH 6 and subjected to solid phase extraction.
Chromatography was performed on a fused silica capillary column and analytes were determined in the selected-ion-monitoring (SIM) mode. The assay was validated in the range 0.3–1 ng/mg (depending on the drug) to 500 ng/mg. The mean absolute recoveries ranged from 92.6% to 96.2%, the matrix effect from 76.9% to 103.3% and process efficiency from 74% to 95.9% depending on the analyte. The intra- and inter-assay accuracy values were always better than 20%. The validated method was then successfully applied to real bone samples from forensic cases in which toxicological analysis for these drugs in blood had been positive. Drugs were detected in bone in all blood positive results, the approximate concentrations being 36.4 ng/mg for amitriptyline, 19.3–3 ng/mg for duloxetine and 4.6–2 ng/mg for venlafaxine.
Traditional bullying victimization and the growing number of cyber-teasing victims during the last decade is a major public health concern. The objective of this study was to examine the relationship ...between students' experiences of traditional bullying victimization and cyber-teasing and the sociodemographic characteristics of a sample composed of college students in Spain.
In the fall of 2014, 543 sixth-grade students from southeast Spain completed an anonymous survey on their experience of both kinds of to ascertain any relationship with sociodemographic characteristics, including gender, nationality, economic problems, family conflicts and alcohol and cannabis use.
A total of 62.2% of the students reported to having suffered traditional bullying victimization and 52.7% reported that they had been subject to cyber-teasing. 40.7% of participants had been victims of traditional bullying victimization and cyber-teasing in the past 12 months. Most (65.7%) of the victims were at the same time cyber-teasing victims; 77.6% of cyber-teasing victims were also victimized in a different manner. Traditional bullying victimization was higher among boys than among girls, while female students were more likely to have been subjected to cyber-teasing than male students. The characteristics that most heavily influenced suffering traditional bullying victimization were economic problems, family conflicts and cannabis use.
Our findings confirm overlapping results in the risk factors that influence suffering both traditional bullying victimization and cyber-teasing: there was a strong influence of certain sociodemographic and individual characteristics of the college population, suggesting that specific policies are necessary to improve college students' environment in Spain.
The purpose of this study is to analyze the prevalence and association between victimization and substance use among the university population in the southeast of Spain in a sample of 543 randomly ...selected college students (405 females and 138 males with an average age of 22.6 years). As a cross-sectional study, data was collected through an anonymous survey to assess victimization and drug use over the last 12 months. Results indicated that 62.2% of college students reported bullying victimization and 82.9% consumed some type of psychoactive substance, and found a statistically significant association between both variables measured. Additionally, logistic regression analysis confirmed the association between psychoactive substance use and different types of victimization. Our findings confirm the need for prevention to prevent this relation between victimization and substance use.
Dear Editor, Crimes involving the use of drugs that modify a person’s will for the purpose of theft, sexual aggression or other criminal activities are named “drug facilitated crimes” (DFCs) 1. ...Scopolamine, an extremely potent anticholinergic drug extracted from plant species of the Solanaceae family, is quickly metabolized and cleared from body fluids. ...at an appropriate dose, it blocks memory and causes passivity, disorientation, euphoria, fatigue and confusion 2. Scopolamine was included in the general forensic guidelines for the analysis of drugs used in DFCs in 2011 and, since then, no sample in the National Institute of Toxicology and Forensic Sciences (Madrid, Spain) has been reported positive 6.
La convivencia/violencia escolar, a menudo, es objeto de alarma social. No parece existir consenso en la prevalencia de conductas violentas en las aulas, pero sí en sus diferencias según sexo, nivel ...socioeconómico o la importancia de las intervenciones preventivas para su disminución. Los modelos sitúan a las actitudes hacia la violencia como un indicador de riesgo para la manifestación de dichas conductas. Los objetivos del presente estudio son explorar las propiedades psicométricas de la versión ampliada del Cuestionario de Actitudes Hacia la Violencia (CAHV-25) en alumnos de Educación Primaria y Secundaria, proponiendo una versión dividida en cuatro escalas y 28 ítems en total, junto a la exploración de la significación según sexo y etapa académica. Se ha llevado a cabo una revisión cualitativa del cuestionario CAHV-25 y se realizó un estudio psicométrico de la misma para cada una de sus dimensiones originales obteniendo los indicadores de ajuste de Análisis Factorial Exploratorio y Confirmatorio en menores de Educación Primaria y Secundaria (N = 600) de la Región de Murcia (España). Los resultados indican que las cuatro dimensiones tienen mejores propiedades psicométricas en su versión revisada. Las actitudes hacia la violencia son mayores en varones y en Secundaria. Se concluye que la versión propuesta permite maximizar la detección de actitudes hacia la violencia en menores escolarizados, sirviendo de base para el planteamiento de posibles programas de prevención de violencia escolar más específicos.
Workplace violence is a social problem of special interest in both intervention and research. Among the sectors that most perceive this type of violence, health care professionals stand out. The most ...common type of violence for this professional group is the one perpetrated by the users or patients themselves. It has been reported that one out of every four acts of violence in the workplace occurs in the healthcare setting. Within the health sector, the Mental Health, Emergency and Primary Care services have been widely reported as being among the most vulnerable, with Primary Care being the least addressed of the three. Although the available literature is extensive, there are hardly any studies that explore from a qualitative perspective what are the sources of conflict in this sector from the perspective of the users, the most common being to work with professionals.
The aim of this study is to examine those aspects derived from the organization, the professionals or the users of Primary Care that, from the users' point of view, cause violent situations and how they think these could be avoided.
The sample consisted of 80 users of the Primary Care services of the Health Service of Murcia. For data collection, a qualitative study was conducted through 10 focus groups and a subsequent thematic analysis of the data.
The results have allowed us to identify that, from an organizational point of view, the uncertainty in waiting times, the need to adapt the telematic or telephone appointment to the different types of users, or the management of emergencies in Primary Care are the aspects that cause most conflicts between users and professionals. In this sense, suggested improvements are aimed at providing information in the mobile application updated on the opening hours or maintaining the telephone appointment for those who need or request it, among many others. As for the professionals, users point out that the medical staff is perceived as distant and sometimes does not provide enough information on the health status of users. Another professional group widely addressed in the focus groups was the administrative staff, being described as lacking in communication skills, assertiveness, or empathy. Users recognize the existence of a demanding/aggressive profile among users, who makes instrumental use of violence to achieve privileges over users in general. We have also identified the profile of the user who makes use of Primary Care as a way of socializing or managing conflicts of a socioemotional nature. As proposals for this thematic block, users suggest group therapies, the use of audiovisual material complementary to the information provided by professionals or community interventions in psychoeducation.
This study allows to explore conflicts between users and professionals from the Primary Care patients' perspective. Our results are complementary to the available evidence that has used the professional's approach to study the phenomenon of workplace violence. The identification of sources of conflict and the assessment and contribution of users on possible ways of improvement can serve as a basis for the design of prevention and intervention plans to improve the work environment in Primary Care centers.
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