Homograph Disambiguation Through Selective Diacritic Restoration

Lexical ambiguity, a challenging phenomenon in all natural languages, is particularly prevalent for languages with diacritics that tend to be omitted in writing, such as Arabic. Omitting diacritics leads to an increase in the number of homographs: different words with the same spelling. Diacritic restoration could theoretically help disambiguate these words, but in practice, the increase in overall sparsity leads to performance degradation in NLP applications. In this paper, we propose approaches for automatically marking a subset of words for diacritic restoration, which leads to selective homograph disambiguation. Compared to full or no diacritic restoration, these approaches yield selectively-diacritized datasets that balance sparsity and lexical disambiguation. We evaluate the various selection strategies extrinsically on several downstream applications: neural machine translation, part-of-speech tagging, and semantic textual similarity. Our experiments on Arabic show promising results, where our devised strategies on selective diacritization lead to a more balanced and consistent performance in downstream applications.Comment: accepted in WANLP 201

THE IMPACT OF EMERGING TECHNOLOGY ON NURSES CARING BEHAVIOR DURING BLOOD PRESSURE MONITORING FOR ADULT PATIENTS AT GENERAL HOSPITALS, KUWAIT.

Introduction: The nursing profession has advanced immensely from the onset. Remarkable changes in medical technology facilitated patients’ survival and treatments which were unimaginable during the period of Florence Nightingale. Although, technology empowered the nurses to provide quality care to patients, some of these technologies can break the bond of therapeutic nurse - patient relationship and make it mechanical, instead. Purpose: The purpose of the study was to evaluate nurses caring behavior during blood pressure monitoring with manual and electronic devices. Objective: Compare the nurses caring behavior while monitoring blood pressure by electronic and manual devices. Methods: a descriptive comparative design was used in this study. The staff nurses (N=325) were selected randomly based on certain criteria from the medical wards of five governmental hospitals. Observations were done during blood pressure monitoring with manual and electronic devices using nursing caring behavior assessment tool. Result: Paired t-test was used to examine the differences in nurses caring behavior. There were significant differences in the mean scores between the manual BP monitoring and the electronic in terms of nursing caring behavior, t(324) = -8.66, P\u3e 0.001. Conclusion: Nurses were able to give more humanistic caring behavior when they monitored blood pressure manually than when blood pressure was monitored electronically. Recommendations: Workshop sessions can be conducted for staff nurses to emphasize the importance of providing a humanistic approach while providing care for the patients when using the technology

The Effect of Guidance Booklet on Discharged Mothers of Children with Respiratory Tract Infection

Aim of the study to evaluate the effect of guidance booklet on discharged mothers of children with respiratory tract infection through: Identifying mothers' needs, developing guidance booklet of discharge according to mothers' needs and evaluating the effect of guidance booklet on the mothers. Design This study was a quasi experimental design. Setting This study was conducted in El- Menoufya University Hospital (Egypt) and El-Basher Hospital (Jordan) Sample Convenience sample of 80 mothers having children suffering from respiratory tract infection (40 mothers from each setting). Tools Data were collected through an interviewing questionnaire to assess socio-demographic data for mothers and their children, mothers' knowledge about respiratory disease, importance of nutrition and fluids. Mother’s practices by asking questions concerning hygienic measures and medications and practices through observation check-list based on modified Getting Ready for Discharge Checklist regarding, temperature measurement and tap compresses for their children. Results revealed that the statistical significant improvements (P<0.01) in mother’s knowledge and practices after giving the guidance booklet in both groups. There was improvement in hand washing procedure, nutritional importance, type of fluids given and importance of medication there was a statistically significant improvement after the guidance booklet of discharge instructions in both groups. Key Terms: guidance booklet of discharge, Respiratory infection, mother

The Effect of Guidance Booklet on Discharged Mothers of Children with Respiratory Tract Infection

Aim of the study to evaluate the effect of guidance booklet on discharged mothers of children with respiratory tract infection through: Identifying mothers' needs, developing guidance booklet of discharge according to mothers' needs and evaluating the effect of guidance booklet on the mothers. Design This study was a quasi experimental design. Setting This study was conducted in El- Menoufya University Hospital (Egypt) and El-Basher Hospital (Jordan) Sample Convenience sample of 80 mothers having children suffering from respiratory tract infection (40 mothers from each setting). Tools Data were collected through an interviewing questionnaire to assess socio-demographic data for mothers and their children, mothers' knowledge about respiratory disease, importance of nutrition and fluids. Mother’s practices by asking questions concerning hygienic measures and medications and practices through observation check-list based on modified Getting Ready for Discharge Checklist regarding, temperature measurement and tap compresses for their children. Results revealed that the statistical significant improvements (P<0.01) in mother’s knowledge and practices after giving the guidance booklet in both groups. There was improvement in hand washing procedure, nutritional importance, type of fluids given and importance of medication there was a statistically significant improvement after the guidance booklet of discharge instructions in both groups. Key Terms: guidance booklet of discharge, Respiratory infection, mother

Association between periodontitis and severity of COVID-19 infection: A case–control study

Aim: COVID-19 is associated with an exacerbated inflammatory response that can result in fatal outcomes. Systemic inflammation is also a main characteristic of periodontitis. Therefore, we investigated the association of periodontitis with COVID-19 complications. Materials and Methods: A case–control study was performed using the national electronic health records of the State of Qatar between February and July 2020. Cases were defined as patients who suffered COVID-19 complications (death, ICU admissions or assisted ventilation), and controls were COVID-19 patients discharged without major complications. Periodontal conditions were assessed using dental radiographs from the same database. Associations between periodontitis and COVID 19 complications were analysed using logistic regression models adjusted for demographic, medical and behaviour factors. Results: In total, 568 patients were included. After adjusting for potential confounders, periodontitis was associated with COVID-19 complication including death (OR = 8.81, 95% CI 1.00–77.7), ICU admission (OR = 3.54, 95% CI 1.39–9.05) and need for assisted ventilation (OR = 4.57, 95% CI 1.19–17.4). Similarly, blood levels of white blood cells, D-dimer and C Reactive Protein were significantly higher in COVID-19 patients with periodontitis. Conclusion: Periodontitis was associated with higher risk of ICU admission, need for assisted ventilation and death of COVID-19 patients, and with increased blood levels of biomarkers linked to worse disease outcomes

Health sciences students' and instructors' perceptions of the emergency switch to virtual internship amid the COVID-19 pandemic: A case from Qatar

In efforts to contain the COVID-19 pandemic, health colleges at Qatar University shifted their clinical training to virtual internships (VI) and project-based learning (PBL). The shift was new to students and faculty alike, and a major change that posed many challenges. This study aimed to explore the experience of changing to VIs during the pandemic from both the clinical instructors' and health sciences students' perspectives. A qualitative study was conducted based on the framework of readiness to change. It involved focus group discussions with students from the departments of Public Health and Human Nutrition and in-depth interviews with clinical instructors using appropriate online platforms. A total of 4 focus groups with 20 students and 4 interviews with instructors were conducted. Transcripts were analyzed following the inductive-deductive approach. The major themes that emerged from the analysis described students' and clinical instructors' perceptions of the necessity and efficiency of the switch to VI; the design of the VI and the extent of the clinical/field experience and skills that it offered; confidence in the ability to succeed in this type of internship and confidence about reaching expected goals; academic and moral support from clinical faculty and coordinators and the communication process with faculty and preceptors; and finally, the benefits gained and how employers would view this type of internship. Health sciences students' readiness for VI was generally low. Several student and faculty needs have to be addressed, specifically regarding the design of the program and the level of preceptors' communication with students. The findings would direct health programs, clinical instructors, and preceptors to better understand students' needs and efficiently plan for virtual internships during not only emergencies but also whenever there is a need to deliver online experiential learning courses.This study was funded by a Qatar University Emergency Response Grant (QUERG-CHS-2020-1)