Different personal and organizational factors contribute to providing futile medical treatments. Promoting the structure and the function of hospital ethics committees, establishing and developing home care facilities, increasing the number of palliative care centers and hospices, and educating healthcare professionals, patients, and family members about the services and the benefits of such centers can facilitate making wise decisions about continuing or discontinuing treatments which have been labeled as futile.

Health care professionals believe that futile care must not be provided; however, there is no clear agreement over the definition and the manifestations of futile care. The aim of this study was to explore Iranian nurses' perceptions of futile care. In this qualitative exploratory study, the conventional content analysis approach was used for collecting and analyzing the study data. Three main themes were extracted from the data: nonfutility of care: care tantamount with outcome; sense of burnout; and subjectivity and relativity of medical futility concept.

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Background & Aim: Academic incivility has a common problem in academic settings including nursing schools. The aim of the present study was to explore nursing students’ experiences of faculty incivility. Methods & Materials: This was a conventional qualitative content analysis approach. Fourteen bachelor’s nursing students were purposefully recruited from two faculty of nursing in, Karaj, Iran. Data were gathered through semi-structured interviews and analyzed via the conventional content analysis. Results: We derived two main categories from students’ experiences; “hidden faculty incivility” and “obvious faculty incivility”. Hidden incivility contained four subcategories, includes lack of mastery over the subject matter, inattentiveness to the learning climate of the class, inability to manage the class, and unfair evaluation. Obvious incivility also included the three subcategories of speech-behavior contradiction, authoritative behavior, and unconventional behavior. Conclusion: This study suggests that faculty incivility can have various aspects and beyond obvious offensive behaviors which mainly pertains to faculty interaction and teaching skills. Nursing faculties and nursing education authorities need to acquire adequate knowledge about the different aspects of faculty incivility and employ strategies for its prevention and alleviation.

Background: The rapid spread of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has become a major challenge for hospitals, which plays a key role in local and national responses to different emergencies and disasters, including the outbreak of communicable diseases.Objectives: This study aimed to determine the readiness of selected hospitals in one of the provinces of Iran in response to the COVID-19 epidemic.Methods: In this descriptive, analytical, and cross-sectional study, we used a checklist developed by the World Health Organization for the COVID-19 pandemic to assess the readiness of hospitals. We assessed and compared the readiness of four hospitals and used Microsoft Excel 2013® to collect and analyze the data.Results: The present results showed that the hospital, which was the main referral center for COVID-19, was in good conditions. However, other hospitals needed to increase their preparedness for the COVID-19 epidemic.Conclusion: Besides the importance of hospital readiness to respond to natural and man-made disasters, these institutions and health policymakers should be also prepared to respond properly to the outbreak of highly contagious diseases.