Exploring the experiences of nurses caring for patients with COVID-19: a qualitative study in Iran

Background The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) is now a major public health emergency in the world. Nurses as key members of the COVID-19 patient care team are exposed to most challenges caused by the disease. As exploring the experiences of nurses as patient supporters and caregivers can play an important role in improving the quality of care for patients with COVID-19 disease, the present study explored the experiences of nurses caring for patients with COVID-19. Methods The study employed a qualitative design. This study employed purposive sampling to select 10 nurses with bachelors and master’s degrees in nursing who were taking care of patients with COVID-19 in ICUs or inpatient wards in southern Iran. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews. The collected data were analyzed using the qualitative content analysis procedure proposed by Graneheim and Lundman. Results The analysis of the data revealed four main themes and ten sub-themes: A) physical, psychological, and social burden of care (excessive workload; fear, anxiety, worry; unpleasant social experiences; compassion fatigue) B) unmet needs (personal needs and professional needs) C) positive experiences (pleasant social experiences and inner satisfaction), and D) strategies (problem-solving strategies and stress symptom mitigation strategies). Conclusions An analysis of the themes and subthemes extracted in this study suggested that the nurses who participated in this study faced many personal and professional challenges. Therefore, health officials and specialists need to pay special attention to nurses’ challenges and needs.

Kiro

Soon, voice assistants might be able to engage in fully-fledged social conversations with people, rather than merely providing a voice-operated interface to functionality and data. So far, not much is known about designing such "social" voice assistants and the potential social experiences, which could and should emerge in everyday situations. In the present paper, we created a design fiction to explore a sophisticated social voice assistant in the context of the car. Based on models from psychology and psychotherapy, we designed the fictional "virtual passenger" Kiro. We created a website for Kiro (http://www.heykiro.com/), distributed it, and collected responses in various ways (e.g., comments). We further ran a market research-type focus group. In general, we found people to accept Kiro as a conversation partner but not as a replacement for human-human conversations. We suggest designing social voice assistants in a way to enable novel types of socially fulfilling, yet distinct human-machine conversations.

Establishing and Testing a Quantitative Measure for Evolving Third Place Characteristics

Third places offer and promote social experiences beneficial for building interpersonal relationships. This study has two goals: 1) establish a scale that tests if an environment is characteristic of third place characteristics and 2) use this scale with four virtual environments (Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, and Twitter) to test the proficiency of third place characteristics as representative of virtual third places. A research-informed scale was created and tested with a sample of 354 participants. Confirmatory factor analysis verified a nine-factor solution, with each subscale reporting acceptable reliability (range: .89 to .96). This scale was tested with 140 participants to verify if certain social media qualified as third places. MANOVAs revealed that Facebook adheres most closely to the majority of third place characteristics, followed by Snapchat, Instagram, and Twitter respectively. The proposed scale can be used with other virtual environments to measure if they qualify as third places.

Exploring the Role of the Student Affairs Office in Enhancing the Cultural and Social Experiences of International Students in China

Many universities are hosting and enrolling international students as an important aspect of their internationalisation mission of higher education. However, many international students experienced significant problems adjusting into a host culture and social milieu. Informing this qualitative study were 45 international students in a top-tier comprehensive research university in Southeast China. The study focuses on the experience of international students towards the role played by international Fu Da Yuans (Counsellors) in enhancing the students’ cultural and social experiences at the university. The results indicate that the four most significant adjustment issues for international students are the language challenges, social interaction with Chinese students, cultural orientation programmes, and counselling services for international students. Building on the U-Curve adjustment theory (Oberg, 1960), the study revealed the importance of international Fu Da Yuans to provide cultural and social support to international students for easy adjustment into a new culture and social setting. The study bears practical implications to providing international Fu Da Yuans with important insights that can help to create an environment conducive to enhancing the cultural and social experiences of international students.

Perspectives, dimensions, and references that shape the notion of nature: A semiotic model based on socioecological relations

If the significance of nature is a crucial phenomenon in understanding the forms of relations societies establish with the environment, in what way is this significance built? This paper presents the results of a case study focused on exploring how the meanings of nature and socioecological relationships relate to each other in an indigenous population. The first part of the article explains the theoretical scaffolding used to collect and analyse data, based on ecological anthropology and Ogden and Richards’ semiotic scheme. The second part describes the methodological procedures and the first findings, that is, the elements and dimensions that integrate the meanings of nature and land for the inhabitants of this population. It is also explained how those meanings are built and how they are fused to local socioecological relationships in an ontological way. The findings reveal that the inhabitants of this community configure their meanings of ‘nature’ from multiple references of biological, spiritual, axiological, and cultural character, often represented by its referent ‘land’. The notion of ‘nature’ (as land) is created from subjective and social experiences with the environment and the territory, and in turn provides meaning to the biocultural identity of the population. However, historical learning, worldview, and social organization also emerge as the main structuring elements of the social meanings of nature and land.

Navigating Disconnected Social Circles: Experiences and Personal Networks of Latino/a Adolescents in the U.S. Rural South

Informed by Bronfenbrenner’s ecological model of development, this mixed-methods study’s aims are to: (1) describe rural Latino/a adolescents’ ( N = 62) narratives and lived social experiences in the context of rurality, and (2) examine their personal networks to better understand their social interactions (subset of 30 adolescents). Rural Latino/a adolescents move in limited social circles and experience geographic, cultural, and social isolation due to immigration status problems, socioeconomic issues, racial discrimination, and family dynamics. This limitation is reflected by personal networks that tend to be homogenous in terms of ethnicity, age, and sociodemographic characteristics. School, although characterized by weak social ties often disconnected from community and family contacts, emerged as the dominant context of sociability where adolescents build their social identity outside the circle of dense family ties. Findings suggest a critical need for interventions to reduce isolation and enhance social connectedness between family, school, and rural community in this population.

Reducing Loneliness with an Interactive Live Video Intervention: Experiment (Preprint)

BACKGROUND Loneliness, especially when chronic, can substantially reduce one’s quality of life. Positive social experiences might help to break cycles of loneliness by promoting more prosocial cognitions and behaviors. Internet-mediated live video communication platforms (eg, Zoom and Twitch) may offer an engaging and accessible medium to deliver such positive social experiences to people at scale. Despite their widespread use, there is a lack of research into how these newer platforms’ socially interactive elements affect loneliness-related aspects of users’ psychosocial well-being. OBJECTIVE We aimed to experimentally evaluate whether a socially interactive live video experience improved loneliness-related outcomes to a greater extent than a non-interactive control experience. METHODS We recruited participants from an online survey recruitment platform and assigned half to participate in a socially interactive live video experience with strangers and the other half to a non-interactive control experience that was designed to be identical in all other regards. Participants completed several baseline measures of psychosocial wellbeing, participated in an hour-long live video experience, and then completed some of the baseline measures again. Four weeks later, we followed up with participants to evaluate their change in trait loneliness since baseline. We pre-registered our hypotheses and analysis plan and provide our data, analysis code, and study materials online. RESULTS 249 participants completed the initial study and met inclusion criteria, 199 of whom also completed the 4-week follow-up. Consistent with our predictions, we found that directly after the more socially interactive experience, participants’ feelings of connectedness increased more (p<.001), positive affect increased more (p=.002), feelings of loneliness decreased more (p<.001), social threat decreased more (p=.006), and negative affect decreased more (p=.003) than they did after the less interactive experience. However, the extent of change in trait loneliness between baseline and 4 weeks later did not differ between conditions (p=.853). Future research is needed to examine how these effects might generalize across different contexts and populations, particularly in instances where participants have an expectation of future interaction. CONCLUSIONS Including socially interactive components in live video experiences can improve loneliness-related psychosocial outcomes for a short time. Future work should explore how these benefits can be leveraged towards longer-term prosociality.