OBJECTIVES: To explore the experiences of nursing students and faculty members as related to online education during the COVID-19 pandemic.
DESIGN: A descriptive qualitative design using Photovoice was adopted.
SETTING: The study took place across five countries and one city in Southeast Asia (Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam, and Hong Kong).
PARTICIPANTS: Fifty-two nursing students and twenty-eight nursing faculty members who participated in online education during the COVID-19 pandemic.
METHODS: Each participant submitted one photo substantiated with written reflections. Data were analysed using thematic analysis. Ethical approval was obtained from institution-specific ethics boards.
RESULTS: Three themes and eleven sub-themes emerged from the data. The three main themes were: 1) Psychological roadblocks to online education; 2) Developing resilience despite adversities; and 3) Online education: What worked and what did not.
CONCLUSION: Through Photovoice, the reflections revealed that nursing students and faculty members were generally overwhelmed with the online education experience. At the same time, participants were satisfied with the flexibility and convenience, opportunities for professional and personal development and safety afforded by online education. However, concerns over academic integrity, practical skills and clinical competencies, engagement and participation, the duality of technology and social isolation out-shadowed the advantages. It is worthwhile to explore the concerns raised to enhance online education across the nursing curriculum.
DESIGN: The descriptive cross-sectional quantitative design was used.
SETTINGS: Data were collected from Southeast and East Asian Nursing Education and Research Network (SEANERN) affiliated nursing institutions from January 2021 to August 2021.
PARTICIPANTS: A total of 1897 nursing students and 395 faculty members from SEANERN-affiliated nursing institutions in Cambodia, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan, Laos, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam were recruited for this study.
METHODS: Quantitative surveys were used to explore the satisfaction levels in education modalities, confidence levels, psychosocial well-being, sense of coherence and stress levels of nursing students and faculty members during the COVID-19 pandemic.
RESULTS: Participants were mostly satisfied with the new education modalities, although most students felt that their education was compromised. Both groups showed positive levels of psychosocial well-being, despite scoring low to medium on the sense of coherence scale and experiencing great stress. The participants' sense of coherence was positively correlated with their psychosocial well-being and negatively correlated with stress levels.
CONCLUSIONS: While the COVID-19 pandemic had negatively impacted the lives of nursing students and faculty members, most of them had a healthy level of psychosocial well-being. Having a strong sense of coherence was associated with better psychosocial health and lower stress levels. As such, it may be helpful to develop interventions aimed at improving the sense of coherence of nursing students and staff to help them manage stressors better.
METHODS: Therefore, an inventory surveillance of the ESBL-Escherichia coli (ESBL-EC) isolates responsible for infections in Malaysian hospitals was conducted. Additionally, the in vitro efficacy of flomoxef and other established antibiotics against ESBL-EC was evaluated.
RESULTS: A total of 127 non-repetitive ESBL-EC strains isolated from clinical samples were collected during a multicentre study performed in five representative Malaysian hospitals. Of all the isolates, 33.9% were isolated from surgical site infections and 85.8% were hospital-acquired infections. High rates of resistance to cefotaxime (100%), cefepime (100%), aztreonam (100%) and trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole (100%) were observed based on the broth microdilution test. Carbapenems remained the most effective antibiotics against the ESBL-EC, followed by flomoxef. Antibiotic resistance genes were identified by PCR. The blaCTX-M-1 was the most prevalent ESBL gene, with 28 isolates (22%) harbouring blaCTX-M-1 only, 27 isolates (21.3%) co-harbouring blaCTX-M-1 and blaTEM, and ten isolates (7.9%) co-harbouring blaCTX-M-1, blaTEM and blaSHV. A generalised linear model showed significant antibacterial activity of imipenem against different types of infection. Besides carbapenems, this study also demonstrated a satisfactory antibacterial activity of flomoxef (81.9%) on ESBL-EC, regardless of the types of ESBL genes.
METHODS: The World Health Organization (WHO) aims to extend UHC to a further 1 billion people by 2023, yet evidence supporting improved emergency care coverage is lacking. In this article, we explore four phases of a research prioritisation setting (RPS) exercise conducted by researchers and stakeholders from South Africa, Egypt, Nepal, Jamaica, Tanzania, Trinidad and Tobago, Tunisia, Colombia, Ethiopia, Iran, Jordan, Malaysia, South Korea and Phillipines, USA and UK as a key step in gathering evidence required by policy makers and practitioners for the strengthening of emergency care systems in limited-resource settings.
RESULTS: The RPS proposed seven priority research questions addressing: identification of context-relevant emergency care indicators, barriers to effective emergency care; accuracy and impact of triage tools; potential quality improvement via registries; characteristics of people seeking emergency care; best practices for staff training and retention; and cost effectiveness of critical care - all within LMICs.
CONCLUSIONS: Convened by WHO and facilitated by the University of Sheffield, the Global Emergency Care Research Network project (GEM-CARN) brought together a coalition of 16 countries to identify research priorities for strengthening emergency care in LMICs. Our article further assesses the quality of the RPS exercise and reviews the current evidence supporting the identified priorities.