Determining factors in the retention of physicians in rural and underdeveloped areas : a systematic review

Background: Imbalance in distribution of Health Care Workers (HCWs) in a country is a global challenge. Almost all of the rural and underdeveloped areas are struggling with the shortage of HCWs, especially physicians. Therefore, this study aimed to identify factors governing the retention of physicians in rural and underdeveloped areas. Methods: International databases including Scopus, PubMed, Web of Science, Proquest, and Embase were searched using Mesh terms in order to find peer-reviewed journal articles addressing physicians’ retention factors in rural and underdeveloped areas. The records were screened, and any duplicate results were removed. The quality of the studies was assessed according to the Critical Appraisal Skills Program developed for different types of studies. Then, through content analysis, the related factors were identified from finally selected papers, coded, and categorized. Results: The initial search resulted in 2312 relevant articles. On the basis of specific selection criteria, 35 full-text articles were finally reviewed.. The major affecting factors in physicians’ retention in rural and underdeveloped regions were classified into the following six categories: 1) financial; 2) career and professional; 3) working conditions; 4) personal; 5) cultural; and 6) living conditions factors. Conclusion: There is a complex interplay of factors governing physicians’ retention in rural and underdeveloped areas. If health organizations are concerned with physicians’ retention in deprived areas, they should take into account these main factors. Moreover, they should develop policies and strategies to attract and retain physicians in rural and underdeveloped areas

Social determinants of disasters occurrence and injuries: a scoping literature review

INTRODUCTION: Disasters are the result of interaction between hazards, vulnerabilities, and capacities. Social factors play a vital role in the occurrence of disasters and their related injuries too. Accordingly, the present study aimed to identify the social determinants of disasters and their associated injuries. METHODS: In this scoping review, grey literature, as well as international and Iranian databases were extensively reviewed using the keywords associated with the title of the study. They were then screened and finally, the related studies were employed in the present study. RESULTS: A total of 14 categories were identified as social factors contributing to the occurrence of disasters and the related injuries including demographic characteristics, literacy and illiteracy, employment and unemployment, place of residence and its quality, social infrastructure, society disaster risk perception, social capital, community health status, trusteeship and leadership, cultural factors and community participation, economic status, minority, family management, and social harms. CONCLUSIONS: In general, various social factors were found to affect the occurrence of disasters and their injuries, which should be taken into account when planning to reduce the risk of disasters. However, such programs are not certainly comprehensive without considering these factors.

Perspectives of Clinical Staff about Patient Safety Culture in Imam Hussein Hospital of Hashtroud, East Azerbaijan, Iran

Patient safety is one of the main part of quality of services provided by healthcare systems. It is necessary to evaluate patient safety culture among medical staff in a constant manner. This study was aimed to evaluate patient safety culture among medical working staff of Imam Hussein Hospital of Hashtroud, East Azerbaijan, Iran. The present cross-sectional study was carried out in 2017. Ninety eight staff was recruited through census sampling. Data collection tool was Hospital Survey on Patient Safety Culture (HSOPSC) questionnaire including 42 questions and 12 dimensions. Data were analysed using SPSS software (ver.16), descriptive data; t-test, and ANOVA tests. The results showed that patient safety culture was at its average level and the highest and lowest means were for “teamwork within units” with 72.14±91.30 and “staffing” with 43.13±62.99, respectively. Based on obtained results, it is suggested that managers should identify effective factors on patient safety culture and promote patients’ health by implementing and following safety norms and designing efficient programs

Health in Disasters Researches Trend in Iran: An Overview of the International Congress on Health and Crisis Management in Disasters

Aims: Since the “International Congress on health and crisis management in disasters and emergencies” has provided a valuable opportunity for researchers to come together from all around the country, its output can be used as one of the indicators of disaster health research development. This article explores trend of original researches in the recent five Congress. Methods: Based on the abstract book of the last five Congress, investigated variables were: number of articles regarding to presentation methods, type of article and methodology of study. Articles were considered as research papers that were based on a defined methodology, data collection and analysis and the results of them were reported. To determine the type of research papers, the first priority was author's opinions. In about the cases that the study types were not explicitly stated, the issue discussed in a meeting and decision make with consensus. Results: At the last five congresses 1866 articles have been presented at all, that 343 Article (18.4 percent) were oral and 1523 Article (81.6%) were posters. 356 (19.1 percent) were original articles and 1510 (80.9 percent) were non original. The trend of original articles show incremental slope from 2012 to 2003 to 18.5 percent rate, but this slope in 2007 up to 2012 is not significant (3.1 percent). Conclusions: The trend of reporting of original researches as an important indicator of development of health in disaster research in the country is increasing, but accelerating of this increase will require: 1) developing and training of research methodology in the disaster, 2) developing educational programs to train researcher in this field and 3) the systematic and financial support of the disaster risk reduction and management research in the country

Spatiotemporal Surveillance of COVID-19 Based on Epidemiological Features: Evidence from Northeast Iran

Spatiotemporal analysis of COVID-19 cases based on epidemiological characteristics leads to more refined findings about health inequalities and better allocation of medical resources in a spatially and timely fashion. While existing literature has explored the spatiotemporal clusters of COVID-19 worldwide, little attention has been paid to investigate the space-time clusters based on epidemiological features. This study aims to identify COVID-19 clusters by epidemiological factors in Golestan province, one of the highly affected areas in Iran. This cross-sectional study used GIS techniques, including local spatial autocorrelations, directional distribution statistics, and retrospective space-time Poisson scan statistics. The results demonstrated that Golestan has been facing an upward trend of epidemic waves, so the case fatality rate (CFR) of the province was roughly 2.5 times the CFR in Iran. Areas with a more proportion of young adults were more likely to generate space-time clusters. Most high-risk clusters have emerged since early June 2020. The infection first appeared in the west and southwest of the province and gradually spread to the center, east, and northeast regions. The results also indicated that the detected clusters based on epidemiological features varied across the province. This study provides an opportunity for health decision-makers to prioritize disease-prone areas and more vulnerable populations when allocating medical resources

Low Mutual and Average Coherence Dictionary Learning Using Convex Approximation

International audienceIn dictionary learning, a desirable property for the dictionary is to be of low mutual and average coherences. Mutual coherence is defined as the maximum absolute correlation between distinct atoms of the dictionary, whereas the average coherence is a measure of the average correlations. In this paper, we consider a dictionary learning problem regularized with the average coherence and constrained by an upper-bound on the mutual coherence of the dictionary. Our main contribution is then to propose an algorithm for solving the resulting problem based on convexly approximating the cost function over the dictionary. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed approach has higher convergence rate and lower representation error (with a fixed sparsity parameter) than other methods, while yielding similar mutual and average coherence values

Spatiotemporal Surveillance of COVID-19 Based on Epidemiological Features: Evidence from Northeast Iran

Spatiotemporal analysis of COVID-19 cases based on epidemiological characteristics leads to more refined findings about health inequalities and better allocation of medical resources in a spatially and timely fashion. While existing literature has explored the spatiotemporal clusters of COVID-19 worldwide, little attention has been paid to investigate the space-time clusters based on epidemiological features. This study aims to identify COVID-19 clusters by epidemiological factors in Golestan province, one of the highly affected areas in Iran. This cross-sectional study used GIS techniques, including local spatial autocorrelations, directional distribution statistics, and retrospective space-time Poisson scan statistics. The results demonstrated that Golestan has been facing an upward trend of epidemic waves, so the case fatality rate (CFR) of the province was roughly 2.5 times the CFR in Iran. Areas with a more proportion of young adults were more likely to generate space-time clusters. Most high-risk clusters have emerged since early June 2020. The infection first appeared in the west and southwest of the province and gradually spread to the center, east, and northeast regions. The results also indicated that the detected clusters based on epidemiological features varied across the province. This study provides an opportunity for health decision-makers to prioritize disease-prone areas and more vulnerable populations when allocating medical resources

Occupational exposures to needle stick injuries among health care staff; a review study

Introduction: Infectious diseases have threatened human health throughout the history. One way of transmission of such diseases is exposing to the needle sticks. The present study was carried out aiming to introduce and investigate risk factors related to needle sticks and ways of prevention of infectious diseases related to needle stick among health care staff. Methods: Searching key words including needle sticks, occupational injuries, occupational exposures (OEs) and infectious diseases, the researchers undertook a comprehensive investigation regardless of publication year of the reviewed articles in references including, Medline, CINAHL, Google Scholar, ScienceDirect and Scopus. Then the collected articles were scrutinized and processed. Results: Dealing with needle sticks can transmit more than 20 types of pathogens including Hepatitis B, C and human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). Among health care staff, nurses are more vulnerable compared to others. Conclusion: Exposure to blood and other risky body liquids is a serious risk factor among health care workers. Training medical staff, establishing reporting systems, changing high risk behaviors and vaccination can play an important role in prevention of the infectious diseases