Introduction Early in the epidemic of corona virus disease 2019, the Chinese government recruited a proportion of healthcare workers to support the designated hospital (Huoshenshan Hospital) in Wuhan, China. The majority of front-line medical staff suffered from adverse effects, but their real health status during COVID-19 epidemic was still unknown. The aim of the study was to explore the latent relationship of the physical and mental health of front-line medical staff during this special period. Methods A total of 115 military medical staff were recruited between February 17th and February 29th, 2020 and asked to complete questionnaires assessing socio-demographic and clinical characteristics, self-reported sleep status, fatigue, resilience and anxiety. Results 55 medical staff worked within Intensive Care and 60 worked in Non-intensive Care, the two groups were significantly different in general fatigue, physical fatigue and tenacity (P<0.05). Gender, duration working in Wuhan, current perceived stress level and health status had significant differences in fatigue scores (P<0.05), the current perceived health status (P<0.05) impacted on the resilience and anxiety of participants. The structural equation modeling analysis revealed resilience were negatively associated with fatigue (β=-0.52, P <0.01) and anxiety (β=-0.24, P <0.01), and fatigue had direct association with the physical burden (β=0.65, P <0.01); Fatigue mediated the relationship between resilience and anxiety (β=-0.305, P =0.039) as well as resilience and physical burden (β=-0.276, P =0.02). Conclusion During an explosive pandemic, motivating the effect of protective resilience and taking tailored interventions against fatigue are promising ways to protect the physical and mental health of the front-line medical staff.

BackgroundIn China, stroke survivors are usually cared for by their family members. However, the caregiving ability of these informal caregivers remain inadequate during the hospitalization of their family members following a sudden onset of a stroke, and this sudden need for care overwhelms caregivers even after the hospital discharge. Therefore, research is required to identify predictors of caregiving ability that could be targeted in future interventions aimed at improving caregiving skills and reducing the burden on caregivers who care for stroke survivors.Materials and methodsFrom August 2019 to February 2020, stroke survivors were hospitalized for the first time, and their family caregivers were registered via convenience sampling. Caregiver demographic information, resilience status, uncertainty in illness, caregiving ability, and patients' severity of stroke were measured using standardized questionnaires. Structural equation modeling was used to test the proposed model, where caregiver resilience and stroke severity predicted caregiving ability directly, and uncertainty in illness mediated the association between caregiver resilience and caregiving ability.ResultsA total of 306 dyads were included in the study. The tested model fit the data well (χ2 = 118.2, df = 64, RMSEA = 0.053, CFI = 0.946, TLI = 0.923). Statistically significant pathways linked caregivers' resilience status to uncertainty in illness (β = −0.558, S.E. = 0.022, P &lt; 0.01), caregivers' resilience to the status of caregiving ability (β = −0.269, S.E. = 0.013, P &lt; 0.01) and caregivers' uncertainty about the illness to caregiving ability (β = 0.687, S.E. = 0.051, P &lt; 0.01). We also found that caregivers' uncertainty in illness mediated the association between caregivers' resilience and caregiving ability (β = −0.384, S.E. = 0.061, P &lt; 0.01).ConclusionsOur structural equation modeling result identified resilience and uncertainty about the illness as predictors of the caregiving ability of informal family caregivers who suffered from care burdens. Supporting family caregivers to build their resilience and reduce illness uncertainty may improve caregiving for stroke survivors.

Dental ceramic materials do not always show linear expansion behavior. In general, thermal contraction behavior of dental porcelain can be described with the polynomial function: L/L= C+α1 T+α2 T2. In addition, a new method for taking into consideration of nonlinear contraction behavior of dental ceramics is proposed for calculating thermal mismatch value (α) between substrate and veneering materials. Discs of eight substrate/veneer combinations (n=10) were fabricated for thermal shock testing. In this study, a stepwise multiple regression analysis was performed to determine the relationship between thermal shock test results and thermal mismatch value (α) on these combinations. A high degree of correlation was found between αs-b and T. The new method proves to be a reliable one to predict thermal compatibility of multi-layer dental ceramic composites.

Background: Early in the epidemic of corona virus disease 2019 (COVID-19), Chinese government had recruited a portion of military healthcare workers to support the designated hospital (Wuhan Huoshenshan Hospital) to relieve the front-line workload in Wuhan, China. It was reported that the majority of the front-line medical staff (FLMS) suffered from adverse effects, but their physical and psychological health status and its relationship were still unknown. Hence, a structural equation modeling (SEM) was conducted to establish and test the latent relationship among variables.Methods: This is a cross-sectional study. Totally 115 convenience samples of military medical staff from Xinqiao Hospital in Chongqing were enrolled during February 17th to February 29th, 2020. The medical staff assisting in Huoshenshan Hospital were selected as experimental group(n=55), the other medical staff were control group(n=60). Self-reported sleep status, fatigue status, resilience status and anxiety status were examined.Results: During COVID-19, the medical staff underwent some impairments of physical and psychological health. The anxiety score of experimental group was (42.84±9.44), the fatigue score was (52.85±9.33), and the resilience score was (67.58±11.75). And the score of anxiety, fatigue, resilience of control group were (46.27±9.94), (49.33±11.20), (65.42±14.54) respectively. For experimental group, we found the different working duration and different attitude to work in Wuhan both had significant differences in fatigue scores (P<0.05); As for resilience scores and anxiety scores, only different current perceived health status of participants showed a statistically significant difference (P<0.05). The SEM results indicated the direct path from resilience to fatigue (β=-0.129, P=0.032) and anxiety (β=-0.026, P=0.043) were both significant, it revealed that resilience were negatively associated with the level of fatigue and anxiety, and the indirect path showed fatigue had a significant mediating effect between resilience and anxiety (β=-0.146, P=0.039) of the Huoshenshan Hospital medical staff.Conclusion: During an explosive pandemic, motivating the effect of individual’s internal resilience and making use of proper external interventions is a promising way to protect the physical and mental health of the front-line medical staff.