Articles: pandemics.
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Palliative medicine · May 2022
Trapped in a double cage: How patients' partners experience the diagnosis of advanced cancer in times of the COVID-19 pandemic: An interpretative phenomenological analysis.
When confronting a partner's diagnosis of advanced cancer, family caregivers are often protected against severe psychological illness by their mental resilience. However, the current COVID-19 pandemic endangers this resilience through the daily threat of contagion exposure, viral transmission, isolation, and fear of death. ⋯ The COVID-19 pandemic challenges one's resilience, a process that, under normal circumstances, may evolve while caring for a partner diagnosed with advanced cancer. Although most partners seem to cope adaptively with both advanced cancer and COVID-19, healthcare professionals should be aware of the risk of exhaustion. Furthermore, it can be presupposed that threatened, contextual factors that may support resilience should be preserved to increase the chances for a resilient outcome.
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Internal medicine journal · May 2022
The workplace and psychosocial experiences of Australian junior doctors during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Junior doctors experience high levels of psychological distress and emotional exhaustion. The current Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has resulted in significant changes to healthcare globally, with quantitative studies demonstrating increased fatigue, depression and burnout in junior doctors. However, there has been limited qualitative research to examine junior doctors' experiences, challenges and beliefs regarding management of future crises. ⋯ Challenging workplace cultures and conditions, which have worsened during the COVID-19 pandemic, are associated with poor psychological well-being in junior doctors. There exists a need for long-term, widespread improvements in workplace culture and working conditions to ensure junior doctors' well-being, facilitate workforce retention and enhance the safety and quality of patient care in Australia.
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Virtual residency interviews during the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic posed unique challenges to students and residency programs in the United States. We evaluated fourth-year medical students' perceptions of the virtual format and social media use to help select residency programs. We also assessed applicant utilization and perceived usefulness of our social media content. ⋯ Most applicants to this family medicine residency program used social media to gather information, but they expressed worry that it was enough. Virtual interviews are likely to remain postpandemic, creating challenges for residency programs and especially for their hopeful applicants. Programs seeking to provide well-rounded information for applicants should maintain a social media presence as part of their recruitment practices.
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Stay-at-home orders, social isolation recommendations, and fear of COVID-19 exposure have led to delays in children's preventive health services during the pandemic. Delays can lead to missed opportunities for early screening and detection of health problems, and increased risks for outbreaks of vaccine-preventable diseases. Understanding prevalence of and reasons for missed, delayed, or skipped preventive health services is important for developing strategies to achieve rapid catch-up of essential health services. ⋯ Physician office closures and concern about COVID-19 exposure resulted in over one-quarter of parents delaying preventive services for their children since the pandemic began. Coordinated efforts are needed to achieve rapid catch-up of preventive services and routine vaccines.