The Psychological Experience of Frontline Perioperative Health Care Staff in Responding to COVID-19: Qualitative Study

BackgroundThe rapid spread of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) has presented immeasurable challenges to health care workers who remain at the frontline of the pandemic. A rapidly evolving body of literature has quantitatively demonstrated significant psychological impacts of the pandemic on health care workers. However, little is known about the lived experience of the pandemic for frontline medical staff. ObjectiveThis study aimed to explore the qualitative experience of perioperative staff from a large trauma hospital in Melbourne, Australia. MethodsInductive thematic analysis using a critical realist approach was used to analyze data from 9 semistructured interviews. ResultsFour key themes were identified. Hospital preparedness related to the perceived readiness of the hospital to respond to the pandemic and encompassed key subthemes around communication of policy changes, team leadership, and resource availability. Perceptions of readiness contributed to the perceived psychological impacts of the pandemic, which were highly varied and ranged from anger to anxiety. A number of coping strategies were identified in response to psychological impacts which incorporated both internal and external coping mechanisms. Finally, adaptation with time reflected change and growth over time, and encompassed all other themes. ConclusionsWhile frontline staff and hospitals have rapidly marshalled a response to managing the virus, relatively less consideration was seen regarding staff mental health in our study. Findings highlight the vulnerability of health care workers in response to the pandemic and reinforce the need for a coordinated approach to managing mental health

A dedicated simulation chain for Hypervelocity Impacts effects on DISC sensor

Comet Interceptor is an ESA Fast-class space mission, which will be launched in 2029 towards an as-yet undiscovered Dynamically New Comet, i.e. never having approached the Sun before, or even an interstellar body. Comet Interceptor consists of three spacecrafts that will flyby the selected DNC. DISC sensors (part of Dust Field and Plasma suite) will be mounted on board two of the three foreseen S/C, aiming to determine cometary dust dynamical properties retrieving information from the particles impinging its sensitive surface. The DISC sensing plate will be exposed to the cometary dust environment thus subjected to Hypervelocity Impacts (HVI), due to the high speed of the flyby (10 - 70 km/s). Nowadays facilities don't let to test all the possible impact cases DISC will be subjected into the cometary environment (very high relative speed during flyby). To overcome this limitation, we set up a simulations system for the sensor with ANSYS TM software and AUTODYN TM hydrocode, capable of simulating a wide range of impacts characteristics (e.g. speeds, particles sizes) DISC will face during the operative phase. The simulation system involves a hybrid model discretized with both Smooth Particles Hydrodynamic (SPH) and Finite Element methods, and it is organized in two main steps: 1. The first step includes the region very close to the impact point, discretized with SPH. Here is reproduced the impact and the impacted surface evolvement from the generated shockwave, large material deformation and compression, till the formation of Lamb waves and the start of the elastic regime. 2. The second step is a transient structural analysis involving Finite Element discretization. The output of the previous step is used as input for this second one, which is applied to the entire DISC sensing plate to obtain the HVI effects till the plate edges, where PZT sensors are placed. This simulation considers the PZTs characteristics to get as output of the simulation the PZT signals. Impacts by different particles diameters and velocities have been simulated. Here we report the simulations system and some of the most relevant final outputs

Sentieri di immaginazione. Paul Ricœur e la vita fino alla morte: le sfide del cinema

Il pensiero della morte viene considerato da Ricoeur come una fonte "altra" di gaiezza, nella misura in cui offriamo la nostra vita a vantaggio di coloro che prenderanno il nostro posto e ne facciamo dunque un dono fecondo: vari studiosi europei si confrontano con l'argomento da un punto di vista filosofico e estendono il dialogo alle prospettive cinematografiche. Ogni parte del lavoro prende spunto da un saggio di Ricoeur pubblicato nel volume

Phenomenology World-Wide

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