Evaluating emergency physicians’ knowledge, attitudes, and experiences of FARC ex-combatants : a pilot study of Colombia’s emergency medicine teaching hospitals

Objectives: In the 2016 Peace Accord with the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC), Colombia promised to reincorporate 14,000 ex-combatants into the healthcare system. However, FARC ex-combatants have faced significant challenges in receiving healthcare, and little is known about physicians' abilities to address this population's healthcare needs. Methods: An electronic questionnaire sent to the Colombian Emergency Medicine professional society and teaching hospitals assessed physicians' knowledge, attitudes, and experiences with the FARC ex-combatant reincorporation process. Results: Among 53 participants, most were male (60.4%), and ∼25% were affected by the FARC conflict (22.6%). Overall knowledge of FARC reincorporation was low, with nearly two-thirds of participants (61.6%) scoring in the lowest category. Attitudes around ex-combatants showed low bias. Few physicians received training about reincorporation (7.5%), but 83% indicated they would like such training. Twenty-two participants (41.5%) had identified a patient as an ex-combatant in the healthcare setting. Higher knowledge scores were significantly correlated with training about reincorporation (r = 0.354, n = 53, P = 0.015), and experience identifying patients as ex-combatants (r = 0.356, n = 47, P = 0.014). Conclusion: Findings suggested high interest in training and low knowledge of the reincorporation process. Most physicians had low bias, frequent experiences with ex-combatants, and cared for these patients when they self-identify. The emergency department (ED) serves as an entrance into healthcare for this population and a potential setting for interventions to improve care delivery, especially those related to mental healthcare. Future studies could evaluate effects of care delivery following training on ex-combatant healthcare reintegration.Revista Internacional - Indexad

Supporting healthcare workers caring for excombatants: incentives among Colombian providers with FARC ex-combatants

Q2Q1Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC)With the Peace Agreement between Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC), Colombia promised healthcare to 13,000 ‘reincorporating’ FARC ex-combatants. Shortages of healthcare workers in reincorporation camps means this promise is in danger of going unfulfilled. More information is needed to determine incentives, disincentives, and recruitment of healthcare providers to address this shortage. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with healthcare providers across FARC reincorporation camps, and a multidisciplinary team conducted analysis in NVivo12 using a team-based coding method. Twenty-four healthcare professionals from 15 camps participated, of which 75% were female. Incentives to work with FARC included improved clinical skills, professional advancement, increased comfort with FARC, and contributing to the peace process. Disincentives included poor living conditions, lack of support, biases, familial commitments, and sacrificing career opportunities. Threefourths of the sample recommended working with FARC, and 92% reported a shortage of healthcare workers. Recruitment strategies included improved resources and specialised career development for healthcare workers, facilitating interactions between FARC and healthcare professionals outside clinical scenarios, and integrating medicine for vulnerable populations into health education. This study shows the impact that working with FARC ex-combatants can have on healthcare providers and tangible suggestions for increasing provider participation to address the healthcare worker shortage.https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1982-6799https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9013-5384https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5372-2459Revista Internacional - IndexadaA2N

Community Report from the Biosignatures Standards of Evidence Workshop

The search for life beyond the Earth is the overarching goal of the NASA Astrobiology Program, and it underpins the science of missions that explore the environments of Solar System planets and exoplanets. However, the detection of extraterrestrial life, in our Solar System and beyond, is sufficiently challenging that it is likely that multiple measurements and approaches, spanning disciplines and missions, will be needed to make a convincing claim. Life detection will therefore not be an instantaneous process, and it is unlikely to be unambiguous-yet it is a high-stakes scientific achievement that will garner an enormous amount of public interest. Current and upcoming research efforts and missions aimed at detecting past and extant life could be supported by a consensus framework to plan for, assess and discuss life detection claims (c.f. Green et al., 2021). Such a framework could help increase the robustness of biosignature detection and interpretation, and improve communication with the scientific community and the public. In response to this need, and the call to the community to develop a confidence scale for standards of evidence for biosignature detection (Green et al., 2021), a community-organized workshop was held on July 19-22, 2021. The meeting was designed in a fully virtual (flipped) format. Preparatory materials including readings, instructional videos and activities were made available prior to the workshop, allowing the workshop schedule to be fully dedicated to active community discussion and prompted writing sessions. To maximize global interaction, the discussion components of the workshop were held during business hours in three different time zones, Asia/Pacific, European and US, with daily information hand-off between group organizers