Estresse ocupacional e satisfação dos usuários com os cuidados de saúde primários em Portugal

The Portuguese primary healthcare sector has suffered changes due to a reform on the lines of the conceptual framework referred to by some authors as "New Public Management." These changes may be generating higher levels of occupational stress with a negative impact at individual and organizational levels. This study examines the experience of stress in 305 health professionals (physicians, nurses and clinical secretaries) and satisfaction with the services provided by them from 392 users. The population under scrutiny is taken from 10 type A and 10 type B Family Health Units (FHU). The results show that 84.2% of professionals report moderate to high levels of occupational stress with the nurses being those with higher levels. Users reported good levels of satisfaction, especially with the nursing services. There were no differences in stress level between type A and type B FHU, though there were at the level of user satisfaction of type B FHU users who show higher levels of satisfaction. It was seen that dimensions of user satisfaction were affected by stress related to excess work.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Electrical Brain Stimulation During a Retrieval-Based Learning Task Can Impair Long-Term Memory

Anodal transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) to the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) has been shown to improve performance on a multitude of cognitive tasks. These are, however, often simple tasks, testing only one cognitive domain at a time. Therefore, the efficacy of brain stimulation for complex tasks has yet to be understood. Using a task designed to increase learning efficiency, this study investigates whether anodal tDCS over the left DLPFC can modulate both learning ability and subsequent long-term memory retention. Using a within-subject design, participants (N = 25) took part in 6 training sessions over consecutive days in which active or sham stimulation was administered randomly (3 of each). A computer-based task was used, containing flags from countries unknown to the participants. Each training session consisted of the repetition of 8 pairs of flag/country names. Subsequently, in three testing sessions, free, cued, and timed cued recall, participants were assessed on all 48 flags they had learnt. No difference in learning speed between active and sham tDCS was found. Furthermore, in the timed cued recall phase, flags learnt in the sham tDCS sessions were recalled significantly better than flags learnt in the active tDCS sessions. This effect was stronger in the second testing session. It was also found that for the flags answered incorrectly; thus, meaning they were presented more frequently, subsequent long-term retention was improved. These results suggest that for a complex task, anodal tDCS is ineffective at improving learning speed and potentially detrimental to long-term retention when employed during encoding. This serves to highlight the complex nature of brain stimulation, providing a greater understanding of its limitations and drawbacks