Interviews about pandemics and protective measures: studying key informants' representation to develop a web-application for fostering children and adolescents' resilience.

COVID-19 pandemic can be defined as a biological disaster whose impact is particularly evident for children and adolescents, vulnerable populations because of their level of cognitive and affective development. For this reason, it is of paramount relevance to develop actions focused on disaster-related prevention and preparedness, including psycho-education. In this study, we aimed at exploring key informants' representation of the pandemic, also to identify the contents for the first two levels of a psycho-educational web-application for children and adolescents, i.e., PandHEMOT® (Pandemics - Helmet for EMOTions). We involved 25 experts with different professional roles through semi-structured interviews about a variety of aspects related to the pandemic. We coded each proposition according to four categories (i.e., Basic knowledge, Procedural knowledge, Safety behaviors, and Consequences). First, a generalized linear mixed model revealed that Safety behaviors was the most frequent category, followed by Consequences, and in turn by Procedural and Basic knowledge. Second, through a cluster analysis we identified three clusters corresponding to different response patterns and pandemic representations. Third, we conducted a thematic analysis to select the items to be inserted in the first and second level of PandHEMOT®, focused on the nature of pandemics and pandemic-related protective measures. Notwithstanding the limitations related to the small sample, this research permitted to explore the representation of different experts concerning the COVID-19 pandemic. Also, these findings enabled to identify the contents for the initial levels of a web-application designed for increasing children and adolescents' knowledge on pandemics, emotions, and coping strategies. This initiative can be an example of a psycho-educational tool to enhance young people's disaster-related resilience.

Re-evaluation of the interprofessional collaboration scale validation between nurses towards other health care professionals occupied in Italian emergency medical services.

BACKGROUND AND AIM: Interprofessional collaboration (IPC) between health professionals is fundamental for the provision of an efficient and effective medical care service. This is especially so in states of emergency, as highlighted by the ongoing coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic. This study aimed to obtain further evidence regarding the validity and reliability of the Italian language IPC scale -an instrument for measuring interprofessional collaboration- in a setting that has yet to be investigated at an in-depth level: the emergency departments in Italian hospitals. METHODS: The survey tool was a structured questionnaire in the Italian language. It comprised the validated Italian version of the IPC scale plus a question concerning the frequency of collaborations between the nurses interviewed and other health professionals. Confirmatory factor analysis was applied to rate the three factors ("communication", "accommodation" and "isolation") that compose the scale. RESULTS: Four hundred thirty-six nurses working in an emergency department for at least one year completed the questionnaire, which assessed collaboration with other health professionals working in the same department. The model fit statistics are satisfactory for all the nurse-target group combinations analysed. Regarding the Cronbach's alpha statistic used to compute the reliability of the scale, acceptable values were obtained for all items, except for those related to the isolation factor for each case of interprofessional collaboration considered. CONCLUSIONS: The results confirm the validity of the IPC scale as an instrument for the assessment of interprofessional collaboration involving nurses and other workers occupied in the provision of healthcare in Italian emergency departments.

Interprofessional collaboration between different health care professions in Emilia Romagna.

BACKGROUND: Interprofessional collaboration in the healthcare sector contributes to the delivery of high quality and safe services to patients across different subdivisions of the healthcare system which is faced with constant challenges. The international literature offers a plethora of tools for assessing the collaboration between health workers, but only a few of these have been validated in the Italian language. One that has undergone such validation is the interprofessional collaboration (IPC) scale, which measures the perception of collaboration among health professionals. An advantage of this scale is that is addresses all workers within the system, and is not limited to specific professions. The aim of the present study was to apply the validated Italian version of the IPC scale, to a context different to the one used for its validation, to measure the level of collaboration between different health care workers. METHOD: A questionnaire-based study was conducted on a sample consisting of 329 health professionals working at Azienda USL-IRCCS in Reggio Emilia. The categorical and continuous variables were analysed using descriptive statistics (frequencies, percentages and SD). RESULTS: The IPC scale showed physicians to express the highest level of collaboration with other professionals, in line with the results of other studies in the literature. The values calculated for the factors "accommodation" and "communication" were higher than for "isolation", depicting a good level collaboration. The only case in which the isolation factor, which describes an absence of collaboration, was equal to the other two factors was in relation to the evaluation of midwives by nursing aides/orderlies. CONCLUSIONS: In conclusion, the Italian version of the IPC scale provides a useful instrument for measuring interprofessional collaboration between workers in the healthcare sector. In the present study, it revealed a satisfactory level of collaboration between health professionals in an organization located in Emilia Romagna, Italy.