Validation of the Health Protective Sexual Communication Scale Among Young Adults in the United Kingdom and Spain.

Background and Purpose: The transmission of sexual infections is increasing globally. The research aims to validate the Health Protective Sexual Communication Scale (HPSC) in English and Spanish. Methods: The study survey was administered to 1,223 university students from Spain (658) and the United Kingdom (565) during the academic year 2020-2021. Results: Cronbach's alpha values were .80 (Spain) and .86 (United Kingdom). The scale's Exploratory and Confirmatory Factor Analysis displays a one-dimensional structure of eight items in both countries. Conclusions: The HPSC has excellent reliability and validity. Psychometric findings support the use of the HPSC as a screening tool to measure sexual risk in youth.

Causes of Stress among Healthcare Professionals and Successful Hospital Management Approaches to Mitigate It during the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Cross-Sectional Study.

The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic posed an immediate challenge to the management of hospitals in Germany and elsewhere. The risk of stress for front-line healthcare professionals forced occupational health and safety units to adopt a variety of protective measures, not all of which have been thoroughly validated. The main objective of the present analysis is to assess what the most important sources of stress were and which of the protective measures applied to counteract stress among healthcare staff had the greatest impact. A better understanding of these factors will improve hospital management and worker safety in a future health crisis situation and may also prove to be beneficial in non-crisis situations. For this purpose, in 2020, an exploratory, cross-sectional and quantitative study using a questionnaire created for this purpose was carried out on a total of 198 professionals-133 nurses and 65 physicians-at the Klinikum Mittelbaden Balg hospital in Baden-Baden, Germany, during the first wave of the pandemic. Statistical analyses showed that nurses suffer more stress than physicians and that stress is higher among professionals in critical care and emergency units than in units that are less exposed to infected patients. It was also found that measures such as salary incentives, encouragement of work in well-integrated teams, and perceived support from hospital management mitigate stress. These findings highlight the importance of support measures from management and superiors. Knowing the actual effectiveness of the measures applied by management and the factors mentioned above could help to protect healthcare professionals in the event of another pandemic or similar situations and may still be of value in dealing with the continuing COVID-19 pandemic.

Combined use of two rapid tests for the conclusive diagnosis of Chagas disease: a systematic scoping review.

OBJECTIVE: The goal of this systematic scoping review is to collect and summarise scientific evidence regarding the validity of two simultaneous immunochromatographic tests for the conclusive diagnosis of Chagas disease. The research was informed by the following review questions: Will the use of two rapid tests be a valid method for the definitive diagnosis of Chagas disease when compared with conventional serological tests? In what type of population has the operation of two rapid tests been tried for the diagnosis of Chagas disease? What are the biomedical and public health advantages of the diagnostic method resulting from the combination of two rapid tests over the conventional serological method? Will it be a cost-benefit strategy for the diagnosis of Chagas with respect to conventional serological tests? DESIGN: Systematic scoping review. SETTING: A search of the published and unpublished literature in five databases was carried out, in order to identify, screen and select the studies included in this review. RESULTS: 468 studies were identified, of which 46 were screened with a full-text reading, and finally, three articles were included in the review. All studies were in endemic countries with adult and paediatric populations (n=1133) and, together, they evaluated four different rapid tests. The rapid tests showed good sensitivity (97.4%-100%) and specificity (96.1%-100%) for the diagnosis of Chagas when used in combination and compared with the reference tests. CONCLUSIONS: The simultaneous use of at least two immunochromatographic rapid tests is a valid option for the definitive diagnosis of chronic Chagas in endemic rural areas, as long as there are studies that previously evaluate their performance on the areas of implementation. Therefore, this could be an alternative to the current diagnostic standard. However, additional studies are still needed in more countries in order to provide further evidence and to investigate the cost-benefit.

Institutionalisation of the case management nurse in Spain. Comparative analysis of health systems of the Spanish autonomous communities. / El proceso de institucionalización de la enfermera gestora de casos en España. Análisis comparativo entre los sistemas autonómicos de salud.

Care of chronicity is a pressing issue for health systems because of its high prevalence and the organisational challenges that it generates. Different countries solve the complexity of the care of chronicity through case management by the nursing profession, obtaining good results. This paper analyses the status of institutionalisation of the case management nurse in Spain through the design of a reference standard to compare between the autonomous communities in their approach to chronicity. Thus, we sought to monitor the degree of progress of the institutional structure of the policies for the care of chronicity in our country through this healthcare professional. Our results showed that no autonomous community has reached the maximum standard of implementation and that the situation is very heterogeneous, confirming a weak and erratic degree of institutionalisation of the case management nurse in Spain despite the formal recognition of their role in patient care.