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.

Developmental psychology and age psychology

The textbook contains systematized information about psychological, socio-cultural, historical-ethnographic, psychobiological and other aspects of the development of a person changing over time. The first section is devoted to general theoretical problems of developmental psychology, the second to the analysis of different ages. The comprehensive nature of the manual makes it possible to solve the problems of formation in the professional consciousness of a stable complex of scientific categories and concepts, with the help of which the factual diversity of manifestations of the mental life of a developing person is described in psychology; familiarization with classical and modern interpretations of human development, with different variants of psychological interpretation of its essence, nature, mechanisms, driving forces and contradictions; disclosure of dialectics and phenomenology of the formation of a person as a cultural and historical subject; formation of ideas about the complexity and ambiguity of the evolution of a child as a human being; understanding the basic laws of the formation of personality and individuality of a person at each stage of its development. Meets the requirements of the federal state educational standards of higher education of the latest generation. It is intended for the study of the discipline "Developmental psychology, age psychology" during the professional training of psychologists in universities and is aimed at students of bachelor's and master's degrees in psychology faculties of classical and pedagogical universities, humanities and medical universities, as well as graduate students, psychology teachers and practical psychologists who are improving their qualifications in the field of age psychology.

Competitiveness of organizations and territories

The textbook discusses the issues of managing the competitiveness of organizations and territories, including the theory of competition, its role in the economy, types and strategies of competition. Meets the requirements of the federal state educational standards of higher education of the latest generation. It is intended for university students studying in bachelor's and master's degrees in the areas of training "Management", "Economics", "State and Municipal Management", "Housing and communal infrastructure", "Trade", "Quality Management", as well as in engineering and technological areas and specialties studying disciplines of economic, organizational and managerial cycles; for graduate students, students of business schools and advanced training and retraining courses. It can be useful for university teachers, employees of research and consulting firms, business structures, managers and specialists of enterprises.

Integration in Mixed Methods Research Designs by Graduate Students at the University of Science and Technology

This chapter reports on a study that investigated how graduate students in the Faculty of Communication and Information Science at NUST were approaching integration in their mixed-methods research dissertations. There has been a concern that lack of expertise of what mixed-methods research is restricts the integrative capacity. Using a research synthesis method, the study investigated three graduate programmes, namely Master's degrees in Library and Information Science, Records and Archives Management, and Journalism and Media Studies from 2016 up to 2018. A total of 95 dissertations were reviewed, and 40 employed mixed-methods research design. It was discovered that integration was commonly done at methods and interpretation levels. Integration of qualitative and quantitative data sets resulted in confirmation (83), expanding understanding (27), and discordance (31). Graduate students dealt with discordant findings by either ignoring the discordance (20), seek corroboration with existing literature (7), or give priority to the quantitative strand (4).

What Encourages Longer Educational Careers in Tertiary Education? A Three-Level Approach for the Case of Romanian Universities

Students’ commitment and engagement in the educational process are shaped by a dense combination of factors, with effects on educational attainment and on the length of their educational careers. Decisions of prolonging education by enrolling in master’s degrees are beneficial for both individuals and societies, as such programs provide higher levels of specialized skills Longer educational careers are favored by a mix of factors acting at the level of individual, university, or wider environment. We focus our study on exploring factors conducive for students’ intentions to pursue master’s degrees considering longer educational careers as desirable outcomes. Thus, this article investigates how the individual and environmental factors interplay and shape the predisposition of students to prolong their educational career by enrolling in master’s degrees. For this, we applied three-level logistic regression models for a sample of 502 students enrolled in their final year of bachelor studies grouped by universities and universities grouped by counties. The empirical results revealed that the final grade, the father level of education, the type of working contract, and job seniority are individual-level determinants influencing the decision of enrolment in a master’s program. At the university level, the type of university and the university performance score positively impact the students’ decision to enroll in a master’s program. At the county level, the empirical evidence pointed out the significance of determinants such as the proportion of students enrolled in bachelor studies; participation rate in education and training; employment level in high-technology sectors (HTC), total-knowledge intensive sectors (KIS), and knowledge-intensive high-technology sectors (KIS_HTC); proportion of persons with tertiary education employed in science and technology; proportion of scientists and engineers; local development; R&D expenditure, personnel, and researchers in the business sector; average gross earnings; density of active firms; birth rate of companies; proportion of innovative enterprises or those introducing product innovations on the decision to enroll in a master’s program.

Managing educational institutions: School heads’ leadership practices and teachers’ performance

School heads are agents of change who contribute a major impression on the educational milieu through their information-sharing methods, creating supportive social connections, participating in mentoring programs, and fostering progress. Hence, this study ascertained the interrelation between the public school head’s leadership practices and teachers’ performance. As correlation research, simple random sampling was used to calculate the sample size for teachers, while total enumeration was used for school heads. A structured questionnaire was developed to gather the necessary information that reinforced the theme of this analysis. Weighted mean was used to ascertain the level of leadership practices of school heads and the level of teacher performance. T-test, F-test, post-hoc test, and Pearson <em>r</em> were employed to establish the degree of association between and among variables. This study concluded that the variation in leadership practices experienced by school heads and teachers is absolutely vital, confirming that their reactions are fundamentally better. Teachers' performance is consistent irrespective of age, educational achievement, or significant contributions. In terms of teaching status and number of years of experience, head teachers have improved teaching efficiency than teachers and master teachers. Teachers with shorter relevant experience showed poorer educational quality relative to those who spent more time in the school system. School heads who have obtained their doctorate degrees get a greater level of leadership practices than the holders of master's degrees. The very productive performance of teachers stays the same, regardless of whether the school heads exhibit a very high degree of authentic leadership.

Research Skills for Information Management: Uses of Mobile Devices in Research Training

Although we live in a knowledge society, instruction in research is still given traditionally. Mobile devices are present in learning processes, but their possibilities for research have not been broadly explored. This paper explores the research skills that could be supported using information communication technology through mobile devices. We start from theoretical frameworks related to andragogy, knowledge management, the technology acceptance model, and mobile learning. As a case study, 20 Colombian virtual education students studying for master’s degrees answered a questionnaire. The results revealed an acceptance of mobile device use in education and a tendency to use apps for information management. These results suggest the need to change the teaching process and design a strategy for the inclusion of mobile learning in research. The use of mobile learning can enhance research training processes framed in the emergent mode of knowledge or context-centric research, especially in virtual higher education.

Continuous Entrepreneurship Education: Formation of an Innovative Model (2021 Experience)

The article presents the results of the federal innovation project implementation “Model of an innovative system of continuous entrepreneurship education of higher education of the Russian Federation” in 2021, created in accordance with the order of the Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Russian Federation No. 1580 dated December 25, 2020, in the Synergy University. The goal of the project is to design, create and implement an innovative system of entrepreneurship education in a higher educational institution of the Russian Federation. It also analyzes the relevance and innovative implementation of the project from the standpoint of the current state of entrepreneurship education in the Russian Federation at the bachelor’s and master’s degrees. Competencies that form the core of an entrepreneur’s professional competence are analyzed. Based on this analysis, the substantiation of the professional competency-based model of practice-oriented education is provided for the programs of lifelong entrepreneurship education. The sequence of the formation of universal, general professional and professional competencies at the levels of bachelor’s and master’s degrees in entrepreneurship programs is revealed. The described approaches formed the basis for the refinement and improvement of competency matrices. It is proved that the development of a harmonized curriculum should be based on the proposed approach to the formation of learning outcomes. The authors describe the design features of methodological content that contributes to the consistent application of practice-oriented approaches in the implementation of lifelong entrepreneurship education programs, as well as innovative techniques, technologies, entrepreneurship training, and the trajectory of individualization of training for undergraduate and graduate programs. Other issues that are considered in the article reveal the activities of the federal innovation project from the standpoint of scientific publications, the dissemination of experience in the scientific community. Based on the described results, recommendations are proposed for the further formation of an innovative system of continuous entrepreneurship education in the Russian Federation.

Moving to opportunity: Student trajectories in the post-Bologna university system in Denmark

This paper examines whether the implementation of the Bologna bachelor’s + master’s structure has been followed by an increase of university students from under-represented groups, and whether the Bologna structure has been accompanied by new forms of student mobility between Danish university institutions. Looking at student movements from bachelor’s to master’s degrees from 1993 to 2011, I do not find that the implementation of the Bologna structure has been followed by changes in the inclusion of under-represented groups. The social gap in progression to master’s degrees remained small and constant across the period. However, the formal instalment of a new transition point in the Danish university system (from bachelor’s to master’s) has provided bachelor’s degree holders with the opportunity to flee less lucrative fields of study and less prestigious institutions, and they increasingly do so. I discuss the implications of these movements in the light of the aim to make higher education more inclusive.