Construction and application of the core competence course training system for infectious disease specialist nurses.

OBJECTIVES: This study aims to construct and apply a training course system which was scientific and comprehensive to foster the core competence of infectious disease specialist nurses. DESIGN: A two-round Delphi consultation survey was carried out to collect feedback from experts on constructing the training course system of core competence for infectious disease specialist nurses. Besides, a non-randomized controlled experimental study was adopted to check the application effect of the courses. METHODS: This study adopted a series of methods including group discussion, theoretical analysis and Delphi consultation to draft the training course content of core competence of infectious disease specialist nurses. Twenty-one Chinese experts were invited to participate in the Delphi consultation from November 2021 to December 2021. From October 2022 to January 2023, a total of 105 infectious disease specialist nurses from two training bases were selected by the convenience sampling method, of which the nurses in one training base were the control group and the nurses in the other training base were the observation group. The observation group was trained by the constructed core competence training course. Questionnaire evaluation was used to compare the core competence of infectious disease specialist nurses and the training effect. RESULTS: The experts, regarded as the authorities on the subject, were highly motivated in this study. Besides, they reached a consensus on the results. The final training course system of core competence for infectious disease specialist nurses focused on 5 competence modules and was composed of 12 categories of courses with 66 classes and corresponding objectives. The core competence scores of the observation group were significantly higher than those in the control group after training (P < 0.05), which proved the training system can effectively enhance the core competence of infectious disease specialist nurses. CONCLUSIONS: The research methods embodied scientific and precise properties. The course system was comprehensive in content and reliable in results. It could serve as a reference for training infectious disease specialist nurses.

The biosafety incident response competence scale for clinical nursing staff: a development and validation study.

AIMS: This study was designed to develop a biosafety incident response competence scale and evaluate its validity and reliability among clinical nurses. DESIGN: This study employed a sequential approach, comprising four phases: (1) the establishment of a multidimensional conceptual model, (2) the preliminary selection of the items, (3) further exploration and psychometric testing of the items, (4) the application of the scale among clinical nurses. METHODS: The biosafety incident response competence conceptual model was developed through literature review and the Delphi method. A total of 1,712 clinical nurses participated in the preliminary items selection, while 1,027 clinical nurses were involved in the further psychometric testing from July 2023 to August 2023. The item analysis, exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis were conducted to evaluate the construct validity. Reliability was measured using Cronbach's alpha, split-half reliability, and test-retest reliability, while validity analysis included content validity, structural validity, convergent validity, and discriminant validity. From September to November 2023, we conducted a survey using the established scale with a total of 4338 valid questionnaires collected. T-test and variance analysis was employed to determine potential variations in biosafety incident response competence based on participants characteristics. RESULTS: The final scale is composed of 4 factors and 29 items, including monitoring and warning abilities, nursing disposal abilities, biosafety knowledge preparedness, and infection protection abilities. The explanatory variance of the 4 factors was 75.100%. The Cronbach's alpha, split-half reliability and test-retest reliability were 0.974, 0.945 and 0.840 respectively. The Scale-level content validity index was 0.866. The Average Variance Extracted of the 4 factors was larger than 0.5, the Construct Reliability was larger than 0.7, and the Heterotrait-Monotrait ratio were less than 0.9. There were significant differences in the scores of response competence among nurses of different ages, working years, titles, positions, departments, marital status and participation in biosafety training (all P < 0.05). CONCLUSIONS: The biosafety incident response competence scale for nurses exhibits satisfactory reliability and validity, making it a valuable tool for assessing clinical nurses' abilities in responding to biosafety incidents.

Characteristics and influencing factors of social isolation in patients with breast cancer: a latent profile analysis.

PURPOSE: The goal of this study is to investigate the social isolation (SI) subtypes of patients with breast cancer (BC) and to explore its influencing factors. METHODS: A sample of 303 BC patients participated in the study from September to December, 2021. Latent profile analysis (LPA) was performed to identify SI clusters based on the three sub-scales of the Chinese version of the Social Anxiety Scale, the Chinese version of the Social Avoidance and Distress Scale, and the Chinese version of the Loneliness Scale. RESULTS: We found that SI can be divided into three categories: high-level (Class 1), middle-level (Class 2), and low-level (Class 3), accounting for 20.46%, 33.00%, and 46.54%, respectively. Compared to Class 3, Class 1, which had the lower average monthly income per family member (RMB) (< 3000: OR = 5.298, P = .021; 3000 ~ 5000: OR = 5.320, P = .018), was more likely to suffer from SI due to occupation (Laborer: OR = 12.023, P = .009). Surgery (OR = 14.138, P < .001; OR = 2.777, P = .020), chemotherapy (OR = 10.224, P = .001; OR = 3.545, P = .001); poorer family functioning (OR = .671, P < .001; OR = .801, P = .002), and lower levels of self-transcendence (OR = .806, P < .001; OR = .911, P < .001) were important influencing factors for SI in Class 1 and Class 2 compared to Class 3. CONCLUSION: SI is classifiably heterogeneous among patients with BC. Strategies that identify characteristics of SI and give targeted intervention focusing on family functioning and improving self-transcendence levels contribute to the prevention of SI among patients with BC.

Relationship of sleep-quality and social-anxiety in patients with breast cancer: a network analysis.

BACKGROUND: There is a complex relationship between social anxiety and sleep quality. However, network analysis studies of associations between social anxiety and sleep quality are lacking, particularly among patients with breast cancer. The current study aimed to extend this research to a sample of patients with breast cancer and to examine symptom-level associations between social anxiety and sleep quality using network analysis. METHODS: Network analysis was conducted to explore their associations and identify bridge items of social anxiety and sleep quality. RESULTS: The network structure revealed 9 important edges between social anxiety and sleep quality. "Subjective sleep quality" had the highest EI value in the network. "Working difficulty under watching" and "Sleep disorders" had the highest BEI values in their own communities. CONCLUSION: There are complex pathological correlation pathways between social anxiety and sleep quality in breast cancer patients. "Subjective sleep quality", "Working difficulty under watching" and "Sleep disorders" have the potential to be intervention targets for sleep disorder-social anxiety comorbidity. Medical staff can take corresponding interventions according to the the centrality indices and bridge centrality indicators identified in this study, which is likely to effectively reduce the comorbidity of sleep disorders and social anxiety.

Fate of salmonella and shiga-toxin producing Escherichia coli on wheat grain during tempering.

Outbreaks of Salmonella and Shiga-toxin producing Escherichia coli (STEC) linked to wheat flour led to increased interest in characterizing the fate of Salmonella and STEC on wheat during processing. Tempering is the stage of wheat processing where water is added to toughen the bran prior to milling, which has the potential to influence pathogen behavior on the kernels. This study aimed to quantify changes in the numbers of STEC and Salmonella inoculated onto soft red winter wheat, and to observe potential changes in the distribution of the pathogens on the surface of kernels during tempering. Lab-scale tempering experiments were conducted to quantify the water activity of and bacterial populations on wheat grain at various time points during 16 h of tempering. The highest water activity observed throughout 16 h of tempering was 0.88. There was no significant change (p > 0.05) in numbers of Salmonella, STEC, or native mesophiles. Using confocal microscopy, observation of Salmonella and STEC cells expressing mCherry on wheat kernels showed an even distribution of inoculated cells, though the localization of cells on kernels did not change significantly after tempering. Even though the environment was not favorable for pathogen replication on grain, the population remained stable, suggesting that disinfection of the kernels prior to milling could reduce food safety concerns in flour.

Graph of graphs analysis for multiplexed data with application to imaging mass cytometry.

Imaging Mass Cytometry (IMC) combines laser ablation and mass spectrometry to quantitate metal-conjugated primary antibodies incubated in intact tumor tissue slides. This strategy allows spatially-resolved multiplexing of dozens of simultaneous protein targets with 1µm resolution. Each slide is a spatial assay consisting of high-dimensional multivariate observations (m-dimensional feature space) collected at different spatial positions and capturing data from a single biological sample or even representative spots from multiple samples when using tissue microarrays. Often, each of these spatial assays could be characterized by several regions of interest (ROIs). To extract meaningful information from the multi-dimensional observations recorded at different ROIs across different assays, we propose to analyze such datasets using a two-step graph-based approach. We first construct for each ROI a graph representing the interactions between the m covariates and compute an m dimensional vector characterizing the steady state distribution among features. We then use all these m-dimensional vectors to construct a graph between the ROIs from all assays. This second graph is subjected to a nonlinear dimension reduction analysis, retrieving the intrinsic geometric representation of the ROIs. Such a representation provides the foundation for efficient and accurate organization of the different ROIs that correlates with their phenotypes. Theoretically, we show that when the ROIs have a particular bi-modal distribution, the new representation gives rise to a better distinction between the two modalities compared to the maximum a posteriori (MAP) estimator. We applied our method to predict the sensitivity to PD-1 axis blockers treatment of lung cancer subjects based on IMC data, achieving 97.3% average accuracy on two IMC datasets. This serves as empirical evidence that the graph of graphs approach enables us to integrate multiple ROIs and the intra-relationships between the features at each ROI, giving rise to an informative representation that is strongly associated with the phenotypic state of the entire image.

Highly sensitive analysis of low-molecular-mass aldehydes in beverages using a hydroxylamine reagent by high-performance liquid chromatography with fluorescence detection.

In this study, a fluorescent reagent, 4-((aminooxy)methyl)-7-hydroxycoumarin (AOHC), was for the first time applied to label the low-molecular-mass aldehydes (LMMAs) through reductive oxyamination reaction to afford single N,O-substituted oxyamine derivatives at room temperatures with derivatization efficiencies as high as 96.8%. In the following high-performance liquid chromatography with fluorescence detection analysis, 12 LMMAs, including furfurals, aromatic aldehydes, and aliphatic aldehydes, were baseline-separated on an ODS column and detected with low limits of detection (LODs) (0.2-50 nM), and good precisions (intraday relative standard deviations [RSDs] were 2.40-4.68%, and interday RSDs were 4.65-8.91%). This approach was then adopted to analyze six alcoholic beverages and five dairy products, and nine LMMAs with concentrations in the 0.28-798.16 µM range were successfully detected with excellent accuracies (recoveries were 92.2-106.2%). Finally, the results were statistically analyzed and discussed. The proposed method has several advantages, including high sensitivity, room-temperature labeling, and the avoidance of further extraction and/or enrichment procedures, demonstrating its great utility for monitoring LMMAs in various complex matrices.

Effectiveness of three exercise programs and intensive follow-up in improving quality of life, pain, and lymphedema among breast cancer survivors: a randomized, controlled 6-month trial.

PURPOSE: Postoperative complications of breast cancer (BC) seriously affect the quality of life (QOL) of survivors. Physical activity is related to prevention of complications and improvement of QOL. Follow-up can keep patients motivated to exercise. This study aimed to (1) compare the effect of three exercise programs on lymphedema, pain, and QOL in BC patients and (2) explore the effect of intensive follow-up on the outcomes of exercise programs. METHODS: A single-blind randomized parallel controlled trial with a 6-month intervention was carried out in China in 2021. The study sample included 200 women with BC. The patients were randomly divided into 4 groups. G0 (control group) was joint mobility exercise (JME) group; G1 was joint mobility exercise + intensive follow-up (IF) group; G2 was JME + aerobic exercise (AE) + IF group; and G3 was JME + progressive resistance exercise (PRE) + IF group. Outcome measures were evaluated at baseline (T1), 3 months post-intervention (T2), and 6 months post-intervention (T3). The following instruments and measurements were administered before and after the intervention: the Functional Assessment of Cancer Therapy-Breast (FACT-B) instrument, the numerical rating scale (NRS), and the relative volume change (RVC). Verificating aim 1 is by comparing the results of G1, G2, and G3, and verificating aim 2 is achieved by comparing G0 and G1. Differences before and after the intervention were determined by analysis of variance of repeated measures and Kruskal-Wallis nonparametric analysis of variance. RESULTS: Among the exercise programs, JME + PRE + IF resulted in the best improvement in QOL (T2: ΔG3-G0 = 13.032, P = 0.008; T2: ΔG3-G1 = 13.066, P < 0.001; ΔG3-G0 = 17.379, P < 0.001). For pain relief, JME + AE + IF had the best improvement (T3: ΔG2-G1 = - 0.931, P = 0.010; ΔG2-G0 = - 1.577, P < 0.001). For the prevention of lymphedema, JME + AE + IF (Z = 2.651, P = 0.048) and JME + PRE + IF (Z = 3.277, P = 0.006) had the similar effect, but JME + PRE + IF is better than JME + AE + IF. CONCLUSION: JME + PRE have the best effect in improving the QOL and preventing lymphedema after surgery. In improving pain, the effect of JME + AE appears earlier, and the overall effect of JME + PRE is better. In addition, long-term and planned monitoring and follow-up are also important.

The social support, psychological resilience and quality of life of nurses in infectious disease departments in China: A mediated model.

AIM: This paper aimed to investigate the relationship between social support and quality of life for nurses in infectious disease departments in China, as well as the function of psychological resilience in mediating this relationship. BACKGROUND: Nurses in infectious disease departments play a critical role in the prevention and control of infectious diseases and in public health care services in general, and their quality of life can affect the quality of clinical nursing work they do. However, there are few studies on the relationship between nurses' social support networks and their quality of life. METHODS: A cross-sectional study was conducted using a sample of 866 clinical nurses from the infectious disease departments of 10 general hospitals in China. Data were collected using a questionnaire survey from January to May 2021. The mediating influence of psychological resilience on social support and quality of life was investigated using structural equation modelling. RESULTS: The score of quality of life was (36.36 ± 7.64). Quality of life was positively correlated with social support and psychological resilience (r1 = 0.521, r2 = 0.583; p < .01), and psychological resilience was positively correlated with social support (r = 0.426; p < .01) as well. The mediating effect of psychological resilience between social support and quality of life was 0.233, accounting for 37% of the total effect. CONCLUSION: The quality of life of nurses working in infectious disease departments is in the middle level. Psychological resilience is a mediating variable between social support and quality of life. IMPLICATIONS FOR NURSING MANAGEMENT: Managers can improve the quality of life of nurses by both increasing social support and strengthening psychological resilience. Managers should pay attention to the degree of social support provided to nurses and take proactive measures to build psychological resilience so that nurses can effectively manage stress and negative emotions from work and life in order improve their quality of life.

Career identity and career success among Chinese male nurses: The mediating role of work engagement.

AIM: This study aimed to investigate the effect of career identity on career success among Chinese male nurses and to examine the mediating role of work engagement in this relationship. BACKGROUND: Recently, with the development of the nursing career, male nurses take up a higher share and play a more important role in the nursing team. With its own particularity and advantages, this group's stability closely relates to the future of the nursing team. Therefore, promoting the career success of the male nurses is essential to the nursing team development. METHODS: The data were collected in China. A sample of 557 male nurses completed measures of career identity, work engagement and career success scale. Structural equation model was adopted to verify the research hypotheses. RESULTS: Career identity was significantly and positively related to male nurses' work engagement and career success (p < .01). And work engagement partially mediated the association between career identity and career success. CONCLUSION: Career identity is critical to predicting and enhancing male nurses' career success. Work engagement plays an intervening mechanism explaining how career identity promotes career success among male nurses. IMPLICATIONS FOR NURSING MANAGEMENT: Nursing management should minimize the impact of the traditional concept, implement the gender equality and provide moderate care for male nurses to facilitate balanced development of gender by upgrading the management system. The administrators should carry out skill training based on male nurses' features and the need of the department. Given full play to their respective advantages, male nurses will make great progress in professional development and achieve greater career identity and work engagement. Meanwhile, the further exploration of better incentive mechanism also makes sense in improving career identity and work engagement by the reform of performance appraisal mechanism and salary adjustment according to their ability.

A sandwich-type photoelectrochemical aptasensor using Au/BiVO4 and CdS quantum dots for carcinoembryonic antigen assay.

A novel sandwich-type photoelectrochemical (PEC) aptasensor for the carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA) assay was fabricated using the CEA aptamer, Au/BiVO4 and CdS quantum dots (CdS QDs). In virtue of the localized surface plasmon resonance effect of Au nanoparticles, Au/BiVO4 showed an effective utilization of visible light and excellent photoactivity, and was employed as the photoanode. After CdS QDs were conjugated to Au/BiVO4 through the sandwich structure based on the hybridization of the CEA aptamer with two partially complementary single-stranded DNA molecules, the photocurrents were further enhanced by a resonance energy transfer between CdS QDs and Au nanoparticles. Meanwhile, the consumption of the photo-induced holes by ascorbic acid could also retard the combination of the electron-hole pairs and cause an increase of the photocurrents. However, the specific recognition of CEA by the CEA aptamer could destroy the sandwich structure and remarkably weaken the photocurrent response. Thus, the quantitative detection of CEA was connected with the decrease of the photocurrent. Benefitting from the above methods for signal enhancement, the PEC aptasensor showed a wide sensing range of 0.0001-10 ng mL-1 and a low detection limit of 0.047 pg mL-1 for CEA detection. The specificity, stability and recoveries of the PEC aptasensor were also excellent. Therefore, the construction of the present PEC aptasensor provides a universal and practical method for sensing other substances.

The determination of trace free acid content in lithium-ion battery electrolytes by coulometric titration in non-aqueous media.

A new quantitative analysis method was proposed, aiming at resolving the difficulty encountered in accurately determining the trace content of a free acid in lithium-ion battery electrolytes in the past 30 years. The presented method overcame the three restrictive factors of lithium-ion battery electrolytes, namely, poor thermal stability, the formation of hydrofluoric acid with water and difficulty in the accurate determination of trace free acids. The free acid in lithium-ion battery electrolytes was directly titrated with ethoxide ions generated through the electrolyzation of a 0.50 mol L-1 LiCl ethanol solution. The content of free acid was obtained according to the Faraday's law, and the whole determination process could be completed in 5 minutes. The relative standard deviation was below 2.0% when the content of free acid was 2.0 µg and above. The detection limit was 1.0 µg and the recovery rate was 99.5%-102.5%. In this method, free acid determination was not affected by temperature change and the existence of a small amount of water. Thus, this study provides a simple, fast and accurate analytical method with a lower detection limit for free acid in the lithium-ion battery industry and comprehensively improves the quality of lithium-ion battery electrolytes and the performance of lithium-ion battery products.

Reductive oxyamination: a method for the qualitative and quantitative analysis of monosaccharides with a new aminooxy reagent using high-performance liquid chromatography with fluorescence detection.

Derivatization of carbohydrates with aminooxy agents to form oximes can be used for qualitative and quantitative analysis of carbohydrates; however, the formation of isomeric products limits its application. A new reductive oxyamination procedure developed for the analysis of monosaccharides with a novel fluorescent O-substituted aminooxy reagent, 4-((aminooxy)methyl)-6-chloro-7-hydroxycoumarin (AOCC), is reported. In this procedure, monosaccharides undergo an oxime formation reaction with AOCC and are then readily reduced with 2-picoline-borane, followed by analysis with high-performance liquid chromatography with fluorescence detection. Good separation of five monosaccharide derivatives was achieved within 40 min with acetonitrile-water-tetrahydrofuran as the mobile phase. The detection limits were on the order of femtomoles. The linear range was 0.2-4000 nM, with a good correlation coefficient (R ≥ 0.9985). Furthermore, the method was applied for analysis of real samples, such as bovine milk powder, without complicated and tedious sample treatment. This reductive oxyamination method circumvents the problem caused by oxime isomers and can be used for the highly sensitive and selective analysis of monosaccharides with high accuracy, providing an effective and promising method for the analysis of carbonyls with aminooxy agents.

Enantioselective Synthesis of 1,3-Disubstituted 1,3-Dihydroisobenzofurans via a Cascade Allylboration/Oxo-Michael Reaction of o-Formyl Chalcones Catalyzed by a Chiral Phosphoric Acid.

The first chiral Brønsted acid-catalyzed asymmetric cascade allylboration/oxo-Michael reaction between o-formyl chalcones and allylboronate has been successfully discovered, which afforded chiral 1,3-disubstituted 1,3-dihydroisobenzofurans with a yield, diastereoselective ratio (dr) and enantioselective excess (ee) up to 94%, 2.5:1, and 98%, respectively. In addition, 2,3-dienylboronic pinacol ester was also applied into this cascade reaction with good catalytic results.

Microwave-assisted deglycosylation for rapid and sensitive analysis of N-glycans via glycosylamine derivatization.

A rapid and sensitive N-glycan profiling strategy for MALDI-MS incorporating the use of deglycosylation with microwave assistance and the co-derivatization of glycosylamine labeling with tris(2,4,6-trimethoxyphenyl)phosphonium acetic acid N-hydroxysuccinimide ester (TMPP-Ac-OSu) and methylamidation has been developed in this work. Notably, highly efficient release and tagging of N-glycans from ribonuclease B was achieved in less than 90 min, providing up to 35-fold enhancement of MALDI-MS sensitivity with comparison to underivatized N-glycans. After further validation with other two standard glycoproteins (ovalbumin and bovine fetuin), the proposed strategy was applied to human serum for preliminary pathological analysis of N-glycans between healthy and lung cancer individuals. As a result, significant differences (T test p value <0.01) of 6 glycan structures were determined from 54 detected N-glycan structures with only 50 nL of loading amount and further confirmed through PCA and ROC (AUC) analyses between two sample sets. Subsequently, the trend of each lung cancer stage and controls in expression of the selected glycans was implemented with T test and box-plots. Accordingly, these structures can be used as potential lung cancer glycan-based biomarkers and for further definition of cancer progression highlighting the ability of proposed method to rapidly and efficiently analyze N-glycome present in human serum. Graphical abstract MALDI-TOF MS analysis of N-glycans by microwave-assisted deglycosylation and glycosylamine derivatization.

Methylamidation for isomeric profiling of sialylated glycans by nanoLC-MS.

The analysis of isomeric glycans is a challenging task. In this work, a new strategy was developed for isomer-specific glycan profiling using nanoLC-MS with PGC as the stationary phase. Native glycans were derivatized in the presence of methylamine and trispyrrolidinophosphonium hexafluorophosphate and reduced by the ammonia-borane complex. Methylamidation stabilized the retention time and peak width and improved the detection sensitivity of sialylated glycans to 2-80-fold in comparison to previous ESI-MS methods using the positive-ion mode. Up to 19 tetrasialylated glycan species were identified in the derivatized human serum sample, which were difficult to detect in the sample without derivatization. Furthermore, due to high detection sensitivity and chromatographic resolution, more isomeric glycans could be identified from the model glycoprotein Fetuin and the human serum sample. As a result, up to seven isomers were observed for the disialylated biantennary glycan released from Fetuin, and three of them were identified for the first time in this study. Using the developed analytical strategy, a total of 293 glycan species were obtained from the human serum sample, representing an increase of over 100 peaks in comparison to the underivatized sample. The strategy greatly facilitates the profiling of isomeric glycans and the analysis of trace-level samples.

Effect of exercise on rehabilitation of breast cancer surgery patients: A systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials.

AIM: To determine the effective exercise methods for different complications of breast cancer patients after surgery. DESIGN: Systematic review and meta-analysis. METHODS: A comprehensive electronic search was carried out with no time limit until May 2020. Studies must have been randomized controlled trials of patients after breast cancer surgery, without limit to the way of exercise. Literature quality was evaluated by the modified Jadad scale. The meta-analysis was conducted with CMA2.0 software. RESULTS: Aerobic exercise reduced the intensity of the pain (MD = -1.043), improved shoulder flexion (MD = 3.398) and internal rotation range (MD = 3.868), lessened upper limb dysfunction (MD = -5.231) and improved muscle strength during flexion (MD = 1.076) and abduction (MD = 0.991). Shoulder elbow movement improved the range of shoulder external rotation (MD = 2.691) and reduced the incidence of arm lymphedema (RR = 0.343). Anti-resistance exercise also lessened upper limb dysfunction (MD = - 4.094).

Inactivation of Salmonella and Shiga-toxin producing Escherichia coli on soft wheat kernels using vacuum steam pasteurization.

Wheat, the raw material for flour milling, can be contaminated with enteric pathogens, leading to outbreaks linked to flour. In previous lab-scale studies, vacuum steam treatment was able to reduce Salmonella Enteritidis PT30 and Shiga-toxin producing E. coli (STEC) O121 levels on soft wheat kernels while maintaining flour quality and gluten functionality. This study used a newly designed lab-scale vacuum steam pasteurizer (VSP) to evaluate its efficacy to inactivate multiple strains of Salmonella and STEC on soft wheat by modeling the non-isothermal time-temperature history during treatment and reduction of the microbial populations. The results demonstrated that vacuum steam treatment could effectively disinfect wheat grains inoculated with enteric pathogens. In this study, Salmonella strains were less thermally resistant than STEC strains. The D75°C of Salmonella strains were 2.8 and 3.2 min, and the D75°C of STEC ranged from 3.1 to 4.6 min. E. faecium had a D75°C of 3.3 min, which indicates that it could be used as surrogate for larger scale evaluation of vacuum steam pasteurization in the future but was not conservative compared to some of the STEC strains.

Influencing factors of quality of life among front-line nurses who collected nucleic acid samples during COVID-19: a path analysis.

Aim: The aim of this study is to investigate the quality of life of nurses who collected nucleic acid samples throughout the COVID-19 epidemic's routine management, as well as the factors that may have influenced it. Background: After the outbreak of COVID-19, normalized epidemic prevention and control throughout China were implemented. Nucleic acid testing has become an effective measure for the early detection of virus-infected individuals. Nurses collecting nucleic acid samples undertake important tasks. Their quality of life is significant to maintaining team stability and containing the epidemic. However, research on their quality of life is still limited. Methods: A cross-sectional survey was conducted on 1,292 nurses who collected nucleic acid samples from five tertiary general hospitals in Xi'an through self-reported electronic questionnaires (including general demographic information, the Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale, the Social Support Rating Scale, and the World Health Organization Quality of Life Brief Scale). Descriptive, one-way ANOVA and multiple linear regression were performed using SPSS 26.0. Structural equation modeling was used to analyze the influencing factors. Results: The nurses collecting nucleic acid samples had a modest level of quality of life. Age, marital status, average daily sleep duration, frequency of exercise, psychological resilience, and social support were all influencing factors of quality of life, according to multiple linear regression analysis. Quality of life was found to be significantly related to psychological resilience and social support. Conclusion: Demographic characteristics, psychological resilience, and social support are the factors affecting the quality of life of nurses who collect nucleic acid samples. Nursing managers should focus more on these factors to improve the quality of life for nurses. Relevance to clinical practice: Nursing managers should realize the importance of the quality of life of nurses who collect nucleic acid samples in maintaining a vigorous nursing team and ensuring optimized epidemic control. Social support should also be provided to nurses to improve their psychological resilience, thereby improving their quality of life.

Factors influencing work engagement among male nurses: A structural equation model.

AIM: To investigate the male nurses' engagement in nursing work and the influencing factors. DESIGN: A cross-sectional study. METHODS: A cross-sectional survey was conducted in 13 hospitals in China to collect data from 328 male nurses from August to October 2021. A structural equation model design was tested with validated measurement instruments. RESULTS: The work engagement of male nurses in China was at a medium level. There was a high correlation of the male nurses' work engagement with career identity (r = 0.764, p < 0.01), career success (r = 0.735, p < 0.01) and social support (r = 0.477, p < 0.01). The linear multivariate regression analysis showed that career satisfaction (ß = 0.393), career identity (ß = 0.392) and subjective support (ß = 0.116) entered regression equation of male nurses' work engagement (all p < 0.05). The structural equation model results showed that career identity and social support were the influencing factors of the male nurses' work engagement and the model explained variation of 66.4% variables. CONCLUSION: To know the male nurses' work engagement and influencing factors in China has certain enlightening significance for male nurses themselves and nursing manager. On the one hand, it is necessary to enhance the male nurses' career recognition to nursing work. On the other hand, the society should provide more aid and support to the male nurses. Therefore, the male nurses could devote more into nursing work and promote the nursing development.