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PurposeThe COVID-19 pandemic caused a massive healthcare crisis. To investigate what makes healthcare system resilient and physicians better at coping during a crisis situation, our study investigated the role risk exposure, such as working at COVID-19 entry points, sleep, and perceived work safety played in reducing negative psychological functioning at work, as well as their effects on adverse and potentially fatal incidences of compromised safety and medical errors.MethodsOur study included a representative sample of 1,189 physicians, from all 12 Slovenian regions and all medical occupations, as registered by the Medical Chamber of Slovenia. For the purposes of this study, a Questionnaire of Sleep and Psychological Functioning at Work was developed in the form of an online retrospective self-report. Additionally, our study included items assessing physicians perceived work safety and frequency of negative outcomes (compromised safety and medical errors) during the first month of the Covid-19 epidemic.ResultsPhysicians working at COVID-19 entry points were more likely to experience night awakening, slept less than 5 h per night, experience nightmares, and had lower levels of psychological functioning in comparison to other physicians. Both hypothesized models showed adequate fit. A higher score on the sleep scale (sleep quantity, sleep quality, and shorter sleep latency) has been shown to predict lower levels of negative psychological functioning at work and, indirectly, reduced incidences of compromised safety and medical errors. Contrary to our expectations, no significant direct effect of sleep on compromised safety and medical errors was found. When perceived work safety was added into the model, the model showed improved fit, with perceived work safety predicting better sleep, less negative psychological functioning at work, and less compromised safety.ConclusionSleep and safety both play an important role in reducing negative psychological functioning at work and, by doing so, decreasing the negative and potentially fatal incidents during the pandemic, such as compromised safety and medical errors. Further, research is needed to see how medical guidelines can be updated to ensure physicians sleep and that their safety is protected.

The importance of individualized work with gifted students has been acknowledged in both domestic and international environments, and the process of gifted student identification is a professionally demanding one. The Slovene Concept of Identifying and Working with Gifted Students, which has been internationally cited as an example of good practice, is currently being renewed. Psychologists should simultaneously secure methodologically sound instruments for the teachers to assess giftedness in students, as they are indispensable in identifying the gifted in educational settings. In the present article, we describe the process of translation and adaptation of the Gifted Rating Scales GRS-S (Pfeiffer & Jarosewich, 2003) into Slovene. The scales could be used by teachers and other mentors to assess their students’ potentials and abilities in areas of intellectual and academic ability, creativity, artistic talent, leadership, and motivation. We looked into the psychometric characteristics of the scales, gathered the raters’ comments about them, and conducted a convergent validity analysis with the currently used Scales for the Teacher’s Assessment of Giftedness (OLNAD07). Thirty-six teachers from around Slovenia participated in the study and rated the giftedness of 175 4th grade students. The translated scales exhibit good psychometric characteristics (high internal consistency, criterion validity, factorial structure) and satisfactory convergent validity with OLNAD07. While the participating teachers are in general wary of the present instrument, they feel the proposed GRS-S scales are more suitable for use in the identification process. We thus propose a standardization study to be conducted with a larger sample and we propose the possibility of implementing the scales into the process of working with the gifted in Slovenia.