This cross-sectional study examines knowledge, attitudes, and practices surrounding breast cancer awareness and screening among women residents in Qatar. Females, >18 years old, registered with the Primary Health Care Corporation were invited to complete an Arabic or English online survey using a modified version of the Breast Cancer Awareness Module. Of the 9008 participants, 69% report awareness of breast cancer warning signs, but the results did not substantiate these claims. There remains a disconnect between participants’ perceived awareness of their ability to detect breast cancer and their actual recognition of individual signs and symptoms. Nearly half (45.4%) report rarely or never checking their breasts for abnormalities (44.6%). Breast self-examination (BSE) and Breast Cancer Screening (BCS) uptake is low and many are unaware of the starting age for invitation to Qatar’s BCS program. While only 18% of women report receiving an invitation, 94% attended, indicating that the BCS invitation is a remarkably effective means of improving screening uptake. Policymakers should capitalize on early recognition, which is possible in the youthful population. Broadening awareness campaigns and interventions targeting a broader audience including males, community and religious leaders and healthcare professionals may prove more effective in Arab communities.

Care for persons with dementia in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) is undertaken predominantly by family members, domestic workers, and private nurses within the home. Domestic caregivers possess different understandings and varying degrees of knowledge of dementia that are influenced by complex socio-cultural and religious factors. With much of the burden falling on the shoulders of “invisible” caregivers, the role and needs of these individuals require deeper scrutiny. The purpose of this scoping review was to examine the empirical studies published on caring for persons with dementia in Arab countries of the MENA region. Using a systematic review technique, searches were conducted on PubMed, Embase, Web of Science, Scopus, and Google Scholar using database-specific terms associated with caregiving, dementia, aging, and the MENA region. To ensure local and regional research was captured, hand searches of regional journals, reference lists of included articles, and Arabic databases Al-Manhal and e-Marefa were also searched. No date restrictions were imposed. Twenty studies met inclusion criteria and the following themes were identified: caregiving experiences and the burden of care; barriers to caregiving; and caregiver recommendations to improve care. Results demonstrate that studies about informal caregivers and dementia within Arab-Muslim populations are underrepresented in the research. This review highlights the paucity of literature on service users’ experiences and underscores the need for future research specific to dementia care within the Arab-Islamic sociocultural context. These trajectories are especially pertinent given the unprecedented aging demographics of the MENA populations.

Background: The prevalence of burnout and anxiety is constantly increasing among health profession students worldwide. This study evaluates the prevalence of burnout and its relationship to anxiety and empathy during the COVID-19 pandemic among health profession students in the main governmental institution in Doha, Qatar using validated instruments. Methods: A cross-sectional survey of health profession students using validated instruments was employed. The Maslach Burnout Inventory-General Students Survey (MBI-GS(S)) to measure burnout; The Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD-7) to measure anxiety; and Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI) to measure empathy were utilized. Descriptive statistics and multivariable linear regression were used. Results: Of the 1268 eligible students, 272 (21.5%) completed the online survey. Burnout was found to be prevalent amongst the students. The mean scores for the MBI-GS(S) subscales of emotional exhaustion, cynicism, and professional efficacy were 4.07, 2.63, and 3.97, respectively. Anxiety was found to be a strong predictor for burnout and burnout was positively associated with empathy. Conclusions: Findings from this study demonstrated relationships between health profession students’ burnout, anxiety, and empathy. These findings might have an impact on the development of curriculum interventions to enhance student well-being. More burnout awareness and management programs that cater to the specific needs of health profession students are needed. Furthermore, findings of this study may have implications for future educational interventions during times of crisis or how this can be used to improve student experiences in normal times.

Phenomenon: The Coping Reservoir Model is a useful theoretical and analytical framework through which to examine student resilience and burnout. This model conceptualizes wellbeing as a reservoir which is filled or drained through students’ adaptive and maladaptive coping mechanisms. This dynamic process has the capacity to foster resilience and reduce burnout or the inverse. This study aimed to explore health profession students’ coping mechanisms and their experiences of resilience and burnout during the unprecedented COVID-19 pandemic. Approach: Employing the Coping Reservoir Model, qualitative focus groups involving health profession students enrolled at Qatar University were conducted, in October 2020, to solicit their lived experiences of stress and burnout during the pandemic. The Coping Reservoir Model was used to structure the topic guide for the focus group discussion and the Framework Analysis Approach was used in the data analysis. Findings: A total of 43 participants comprised eight focus groups. Health profession students encountered myriad personal, social, and academic challenges during the pandemic which adversely impacted their wellbeing and their capacity for coping. In particular, students reported high levels of stress, internal conflict, and heavy demands on their time and energy. The shift to online learning and uncertainty associated with adapting to online learning and new modes of assessment were exacerbating factors. Students sought to replenish their coping reservoir through engagement in a range of intellectual, social, and health-promoting activities and seeking psychosocial support in their efforts to mitigate these stressors. Insights: Students in this region have traditionally been left to their own devices to deal with stress and burnout during their academic training, wherein the institutions focus exclusively on the delivery of information. This study underscores student needs and potential avenues that health profession educators might implement to better support their students, for instance the development and inclusion of longitudinal wellbeing and mentorship curricula geared to build resilience and reduce burnout. The invaluable contributions of health professionals during the pandemic warrant emphasis, as does an examination of the stress associated with these roles to normalize and justify inclusion of wellbeing and resilience modules within the curriculum. Actively engaging health profession students in university-led volunteer activities during public health crises and campaigns would provide opportunities to replenish their coping reservoirs through social engagement, intellectual stimulation, and consolidating their future professional identities.

Objective: This research investigated the association between childhood and adulthood tobacco smoking exposure with ulcerative colitis (UC) and Crohn’s disease (CD) in Qatar. Study Design and Setting: In this case-control study, CD and UC cases were matched to controls of the same age and sex. The associations between UC and CD and childhood passive smoking and adulthood active smoking were assessed using conditional multivariable logistic regression. Results: A total of 89 CD cases, median age of 37 years (IQR 29– 47), and 362 UC cases, median age of 35 years (IQR 28– 44), and equal numbers of controls were included. After multivariable logistic regression, CD was associated with higher odds of being a current smoker (OR 2.51, 95% CI 0.85– 7.37, p=0.095), with weak evidence against the null hypothesis. This association was more pronounced in women, where CD was associated with both adulthood current smoking (OR 42.71, 95% CI, 1.17– 1559.57, p=0.041), and childhood smoking exposure (OR 8.23, 95% CI, 1.36– 49.66, p=0.021). In males, no associations were observed between CD and the smoking exposures. No associations were observed between UC and both smoking variables. Conclusion: In Qatar, adulthood tobacco smoking appears to increase the odds of CD. Further, our findings suggest that both childhood and adulthood cigarette smoke exposure may possibly have a detrimental effect on the odds of CD in females but not in males, although further research is needed.

Purpose: Assessment of reflective writing for medical students is challenging, and there is lack of an available instrument with good psychometric properties. The authors developed a new instrument for assessment of reflective writing-based portfolios and examined the construct validity of this instrument. Methods: After an extensive literature review and pilot testing of the instrument, two raters assessed the reflective writing-based portfolios from years 2 and 3 medical students (n=135) on three occasions. The instrument consists of three criteria: organization, description of an experience and reflection on the experience. We calculated the reliability of scores using generalizability theory with a fully crossed design and two facets (raters and occasions). In addition, we measured criterion validity by testing correlations with students’ scores using other assessment methods. Results: The dependability (Φ) coefficient of the portfolio scores was 0.75 using two raters on three occasions. Students’ portfolio scores represented 46.6% of the total variance across all score comparisons. The variance due to occasions was negligible, while the student–occasion interaction was small. The variance due to student–rater interaction represented 17.7%, and the remaining 27.7% of the variance was due to unexplained sources of error. The decision (D) study suggested that an acceptable dependability (Φ = 0.70 and 0.72) can be achieved by using two raters for one and two occasions, respectively. Finally, we found moderate to large effect-size correlations between students’ scores in reflective writing-based portfolios and communication skills (r = 0.47) and PBL tutorials (r = 0.50). Conclusion: We demonstrated the presence of different sources of evidence that support construct validity of the study instrument. Further studies are warranted before utilizing this instrument for summative assessment of students’ reflective writing-based portfolios in other medical schools.