Spontaneous adverse event reporting by COVID-19 vaccinated healthcare professionals through an electronic form implemented by the hospital pharmacy

Aim Implementation of a web-form based pharmacovigilance plan for the spontaneous notification of adverse events to the Comirnaty® COVID-19 vaccine during its administration to hospital healthcare professionals. Methods An electronic pharmacovigilance form was developed containing 8 pre-defined event options, an open answer option for the description of other events and/or symptoms, and a question about the overall intensity of symptoms. The adverse events reports were standardised according to physiological and pathological condition. Results A total of 4119 adverse events notifications were obtained with a 45% rate of electronic notification. The most clinically relevant events reported were: tachycardia (n=19), dyspnoea (n=7), chest pain (n=6), facial/labial oedema (n=6), lipothymia (n=5), bronchospasm (n=2), herpetic infection (n=2), vasculitis (n=2), arrhythmia (n=1), difficult to control arterial hypertension (n=1), gastritis (n=1) and spontaneous abortion (n=1). Regarding the intensity of symptoms (n=2928), 70.0% were reported as mild, 25.8% as moderate and 4.27% as severe, with higher intensity in the 2nd dose compared to 1st dose. The highest frequency of severe events were reported in the groups from 40 to 59 years in both vaccination periods. During the vaccination process, no hospitalisations and no deaths were notified and/or recorded. Conclusion In this real world study, comparing with Comirnaty clinical trials program, it was observed a higher frequency of adenomegaly and gastrointestinal disorders. Noteworthy, the notification of a case of miscarriage. The use of hospital pharmacy pharmacovigilance electronic forms, seemed to be relevant to notification adherence and to obtain a greater and faster knowledge of COVID-19 vaccine safety profile.

The answer depends on pragmatic norms and epistemic reflection. A linguistic and epistemological analysis of the Danish Short Form 36 Health Survey (SF-36)

Purpose The SF-36 is a commonly used tool for measuring health status in a general population. Despite the overall moderate to high validity scores, we believe that certain communicative dynamics of the questionnaire deserve more careful attention. Our aim was to examine how pragmatic dynamics and epistemic reflection may influence answers to the SF-36.Methods We applied a three-step Gricean analysis, which included identification of the items in which pragmatic dynamics are most likely to have a significant effect, examination of how Gricean maxims might affect the answers given to the items identified, and finally, assessment of whether the combined influence of linguistic context-sensitivity and pragmatic norms is benign.Results Items 6, 9a, 10 and 11a–d were included in the analysis. Regarding these items, our analysis showed that the pragmatic dynamics of scalar implicatures are crucial to the interpretation of answer options. In addition, we raised concerns specifically about the answer option ‘Ved ikke’; rather than representing a neutral midpoint, the answer is compatible with both a positive and a negative answer option. Nonetheless, we found that the communicative dynamics of the questionnaire are mostly benign.Conclusion Compared to the significance of scalar implicatures, the potential effects of epistemic reflection that we identified are minor because they concern only items with a ‘Don’t know’ answer option. However, we raised the concern that attention to epistemic error possibilities might prompt respondents to opt for a ‘Don’t know’ answer despite having evidence supporting a different answer. Therefore, although pragmatic norms of communication are far more significant than attention to epistemic error possibilities in shaping answers to the SF-36, we think that both factors belong in a description of how the questionnaire works.

MARKETING RESEARCH OF CONSUMER PREFERENCES OF SCHOOL-AGE CHILDREN WHEN CHOOSING SUGAR AND FLOUR CONFECTIONERY PRODUCTS

Для изменения сложившегося рациона питания школьников необходимо замещение традиционных продуктов с низкой пищевой ценностью альтернативными продуктами функционального назначения, соответствующими потребностям детского организма. Особый интерес для производства функциональных продуктов представляют кондитерские изделия, которые пользуются большим покупательским спросом у населения, особенно у детей. С целью создания рекомендаций по изменению ассортимента выпускаемой продукции, способов ее рекламирования и стимулирования покупательского спроса проведены маркетинговые исследования потребительских предпочтений обучающихся трех возрастных групп – 7–11, 12–15 и 16–18 лет при выборе сахаристых и мучных кондитерских изделий. Опрос был проведен в форме анкетирования. Опросный лист состоял из закрытых вопросов, которые были поделены на альтернативные вопросы, предполагающие возможность выбора только одного варианта ответа, и вопросы-«меню», позволяющие респондентам выбрать одновременно несколько вариантов ответа. В опросе обучающихся младшего школьного возраста приняли участие и их родители. Всего было опрошено 446 человек. Результаты опроса представлены в виде диаграмм. Установлено, что наиболее предпочитаемым видом сахаристых кондитерских изделий является шоколад, мучных – печенье. Определены критерии выбора респондентов при покупке кондитерских изделий. Replacing traditional products with low nutritional value with alternative functional products that meet the needs of the child's body is necessary to change the current diet of schoolchildren. Confectionery products that are in high consumer demand among the population, especially children, are of particular interest for the production of functional products. Marketing research of consumer preferences of students of three age groups – 7–11, 12–15 and 16–18 years old when choosing sugar and flour confectionery products was conducted in order to create recommendations for changing the range of products, ways to advertise it and stimulate consumer demand. The survey was conducted in the form of a questionnaire. The questionnaire consisted of closed-ended questions that were divided into alternative questions that allow you to choose only one answer option, and questions-«menu» that allow respondents to choose several answer options at the same time. Рarents of schoolchildren of the younger age group also took part in the survey. A total of 446 people were interviewed. The results of the survey are presented in the form of diagrams. It is established that the most preferred type of sugar confectionery is chocolate, flour – cookies. The criteria for choosing respondents when purchasing confectionery products are defined.

Translation and Validity of the Malay Version of the Five-Factor Nonverbal Personality Questionnaire (FFNPQ)

Introduction: The Five-Factor Nonverbal Personality Questionnaire (FF-NPQ) is a non-verbal personality inventory consisting of illustrations of different social situations, designed to measure five broad factors underlying the Big-Five model of personality. This study aimed to prove the validity of the FF-NPQ in Malaysia. Methods: The FF-NPQ instruction and the answer option were translated to the Malay language, which is the main language spoken in Malaysia. A total of 153 university students aged 18–30 years from Universiti Sains Malaysia were involved in this study. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), composite reliability and intraclass correlation (ICC) were applied to show evidence of validity by internal structure. Results: CFA indicated that only 26 out of 60 items remained in the final model while maintaining the five personality factors. Each factor had a good composite reliability value of 0.68–0.77. The ICC values from the test-retest analysis ranged from 0.65 to 0.75. Conclusion: Overall, the shortened Malay Version of the FF -NPQ (five-factor, 26 items) exhibited acceptable evidence of validity in Malaysia.

DCMN+: Dual Co-Matching Network for Multi-Choice Reading Comprehension

Multi-choice reading comprehension is a challenging task to select an answer from a set of candidate options when given passage and question. Previous approaches usually only calculate question-aware passage representation and ignore passage-aware question representation when modeling the relationship between passage and question, which cannot effectively capture the relationship between passage and question. In this work, we propose dual co-matching network (DCMN) which models the relationship among passage, question and answer options bidirectionally. Besides, inspired by how humans solve multi-choice questions, we integrate two reading strategies into our model: (i) passage sentence selection that finds the most salient supporting sentences to answer the question, (ii) answer option interaction that encodes the comparison information between answer options. DCMN equipped with the two strategies (DCMN+) obtains state-of-the-art results on five multi-choice reading comprehension datasets from different domains: RACE, SemEval-2018 Task 11, ROCStories, COIN, MCTest.

Patient Expectations about Communication in the Perioperative Setting of Elective Knee Surgery – a Questionnaire-based Cross-sectional Study

Background Patient expectations are an issue which is attracting increased interest in outcome research for knee surgery procedures. So far, research into patient expectations has mainly focused on the procedure and postoperative functional improvements. The purpose of this study was to identify patient expectations in the perioperative setting. Material and Methods This was a single-center prospective study. A 17-item questionnaire (ordinal answer scale) about patientsʼ perioperative expectations was developed and completed by patients undergoing elective joint-preserving knee surgery. The study covered a period of 3 months and included all patients consecutively undergoing knee surgery. Subgroup analysis was performed for gender, age and type of insurance. Results 111 consecutive patients completed the questionnaire on admission. Significant preferences for one answer option were found for 13 out of 17 items. Patients considered it “unimportant” whether or not the physician wore a white coat during the consultation and “very important” that the first medical consultation after the patient was discharged from hospital was with the surgeon who had performed their operation. A concise explanation of the surgical procedure using images, talking to the surgeon the day before surgery and immediately after surgery, having their wound personally inspected by the surgeon, and, finally, the availability of the surgeon by phone were regarded as “important”. There were no differences in patient responses between the different subgroups. Conclusion Patients expect a high personal commitment and availability of the surgeon during the entire perioperative setting, starting from the first consultation and continuing during follow-up examinations.

Heuristic Cues for Meta-Reasoning Judgments

Metacognitive research aims to explain how people regulate their effort when performing cognitive tasks, to expose conditions that support reliable monitoring of chance for success, and to provide a basis for developing improvement guidelines. The essence of the domain is that monitoring drives control: people continually self-assess their chance for success before, during, and after performing a cognitive task, and use these judgments to guide their effort-allocation decisions (e.g., whether to reconsider an answer option, change strategy, seek help, or give up). Thus, factors that underlie metacognitive judgments affect the efficiency with which people perform cognitive tasks. This paper focuses on meta-reasoning – the monitoring and control processes that apply to reasoning, problem-solving, and decision-making tasks. So far, relatively little is known about heuristic cues used for inferring meta-reasoning judgments. This paper reviews the known heuristic cues and offers methodological guidelines for a critical reading of existing research and for designing high-quality studies that will advance this important domain.

If At First You Don't Succeed... Reconsider: Attainability Cues and Adaptive Disengagement

Peoples’decisions to persist or disengage from a goal are essential to successful self-regulation. Whenpeople encounter unattainable goals, persistence can cause psychological and physicaldistress. The present study hypothesizes that variation in task persistence (an individual’s decisions to continue in a particular task or behavior) is due in part to peoples’ evaluations of the task’s attainability. In a within subjects design, participants were given two sets of challenging cognitive puzzles with several unsolvable items. The first set of puzzles had no cue about attainability, but the second set included an answer option indicating that the correct answer was not present. As predicted, the attainability manipulation had a significant effect on persistence, with participants spending less time on puzzles when they were cued that they might be unattainable. Most significantly, participants high in self-control spent less time on impossible puzzles in the un-cued condition, an effect opposite our prediction and the literature consensus.

Oxford Assess and Progress: Situational Judgement Test

Returning for a third edition, Oxford Assess and Progress: Situational Judgement Test (SJT) is THE definitive guide for students preparing to sit the Situational Judgement Test for entry into the UK Foundation Programme. This authoritative book, mapped to the Foundation Programme curriculum and GMC guidance, includes over 285 practice questions to help you maximize your SJT score. Fully revised and updated, this third edition provides over 285 questions and high-quality feedback that has been developed to clarify the ranking of every answer option, not just the correct one. All scenarios are based on real experiences informed by practising doctors and medical students who have sat the SJT to ensure that the questions closely mirror the content of the real exam. Two mock tests allow candidates to prepare for exam day and practice their timings - one of the biggest challenges in the exam. Written by consultants, this authoritative guide demystifies the SJT, allowing you to achieve the best possible score and take control of the first stage of your medical career.