The complexity of palliative care means that the emotional distress and burden that primary family caregivers suffer under can be particularly high. The objective of this study was to determine the level of burden endured by these primary family caregivers and to identify the variables that predict it in the caregiving relatives of people who require home-based palliative care. A descriptive-correlational cross-sectional study was conducted. Socio-demographic and clinical data were collected from caregivers through a self-administered questionnaire that included questions from the 12-Item Short Form Health Survey (SF-12), Zarit Caregiver Burden Interview (ZBI), Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS), Brief Resilient Coping Scale (BRCS), Post Traumatic Growth Inventory (PTGI), and Fatigue Assessment Scale (FAS). A total of 77 caregivers participated; 66.2% were women, and the mean age was 61.5 years. Most (62.3%) were providing care to cancer patients. From among these data, the presence of anxiety as a clinical problem (48.1%), a high average fatigue score (FAS) of 23.0 (SD = 8.5), and the prevalence of intense overload (41.6%) stood out. We found statistically significant correlations between the variables of burden, fatigue, post-traumatic growth, anxiety, and depression, with the latter two being the main predictive variables of burden. In addition, caregiver burden was associated with a worsening of health. Identifying the factors that influence the appearance of overburden will allow the specific needs of careers to be assessed in order to offer them emotional support within the healthcare environment.

Background: During the transfer of patients, both ambulance and hospital emergency service professionals need to exchange necessary, precise, and complete information for an effective handover. Some factors threaten a quality handover such as excessive caseload, patients with multiple comorbidities, limited past medical history, and frequent interruptions.Purpose: To explore the viewpoint of nurses on their experience of patient handovers, describing the essential aspects of the process and areas for improvement, and establishing standardized elements for an effective handover.Methods: A qualitative research method was used.Results: Nurses identified the need to standardize the patient transfer process by a written record to support the verbal handover and to transmit patient information adequately, in a timely manner, and in a space free of interruptions, in order to increase patient safety.Conclusions: An organized method does not exist. The quality of handovers could be enhanced by improvements in communication and standardizing the process.

Objective To review studies of anxiety in critically ill patients admitted to an intensive care unit to describe the level of anxiety and synthesize the psychometric properties of the instruments used to measure anxiety.

There is a need for trained health professionals who can swiftly respond to disasters occurring worldwide. Little is known about whether the currently available programmes in disaster management are in line with the recommendations of expert researchers. Our objective was to qualitatively review the characteristics of European educational programmes in health emergency and disaster management and to provide guidance to help improve their curricula. We carried out an integrative review to extract the main characteristics of the 2020/21 programmes available. We identified 34 programmes, the majority located in Spain, the UK or France. The primary qualification types awarded were master’s degrees, half of them lasting one year, and the most common teaching method was in person. Almost all of the programmes used a virtual university classroom, a third offered multidisciplinary disaster management content and teachers, and half of them employed situational simulations. The quality of European educational programmes in health emergency and disaster management has improved, especially in terms of using more practical and interactive teaching methodologies and in the inclusion of relevant topics such as communication, psychological approaches and evaluation of the interventions. However, generally, the educational programmes in disaster management have not yet incorporated the skills related to the intercultural and interprofessional awareness aspects.

Background In order to measure anxiety in physically and cognitively debilitated patients, such as patients receiving invasive mechanical ventilation, the use of reliable and valid instruments is recommended; however, these instruments should be short. Objective To analyze the reliability and validity of a short version of the state subscale from the Spielberger State-Trait Anxiety Inventory, developed by Chlan and colleagues and translated into Spanish (STAI-E6), in patients receiving invasive mechanical ventilation. Methods An instrumental study was conducted of 80 patients receiving invasive mechanical ventilation in the intensive care unit at the Hospital of Alicante (Spain). The patients completed the 6-item STAI-E6 scale. Before the patients completed the scale, the interviewers indicated their impression of each patient's level of anxiety by using a linear scale. Internal consistency, construct validity, and convergent validity of the scale were analyzed. Results The scale did not present a floor/ceiling effect, the Cronbach α was 0.79, and the single-factor structure of the original scale was maintained. Scores on the scale correlated positively with the subjective assessment of the health professional. Significant differences were found only between anxiety level and duration of intubation. Conclusions The 6-item version of the state subscale from the STAI-E6 shows satisfactory reliability and validity for Spanish patients receiving invasive mechanical ventilation.