Background: Compassion is a key component of quality care. Encouraging Health Care Professionals (HCPs) to develop a patient-centered care relationship through mindfulness and compassion training may be beneficial for both patients and HCPs.Method: We assessed the impact of a compassion-centered mindfulness program [i.e., the Mindfulness Based (MB) CARE program] on healthcare practice conducting 10 phone interviews with HCPs who experienced the program.Results: The training had an overall positive impact on the HCPs ability to feel compassion toward their patients and themselves, helped them develop kindness toward themselves and their patients, and enhanced their attention to their patient’s needs and theirs. Participants were better able to accept the difficult work experiences or those their patients experienced, with more perceived equanimity and less reactivity.Conclusion: Professional mindfulness and compassion training programs could be operational levers for institutions aiming at fostering more compassionate HCPs–patients relationships.

The COVID-19 pandemic illustrated that intolerance of uncertainty (IU) can hinder problem-solving and lead to avoidance of ambiguous situations. Furthermore, people tend to lack confidence in decisions made in ambiguous contexts. We wanted to investigate the impact of IU on intentions to get vaccinated, to vaccinate one’s children, and to recommend the vaccine in situations with varying degrees of perceived uncertainty. We first conducted a pretest to select six scenarios with different levels of perceived uncertainty. In the core study, 485 participants answered for each of the six scenarios whether they would get vaccinated, vaccinate their children (or imagine doing so, for individuals without children), and whether they would recommend the vaccine. They also completed the IUS-12 (Intolerance of Uncertainty scale) and the VAX (Vaccination Attitudes Examination). Results showed that perceived uncertainty did not influence our measures, but the IUS-12 and VAX predicted the difference in score between the most and least uncertain scenarios. An indirect effect of the IUS-12 on decision confidence through the VAX was found, but with no direct effect. We conclude that, even if future studies should refine these results, Public Policies should be more focused on factors such as IU and attitudes toward vaccination.

Mistrust in COVID-19 vaccines may hinder vaccination campaigns. We looked at cognitive determinants of vaccination intentions against COVID-19. We were interested in (i) the effects of stress and (ii) the effects of self-protection systems on attitudes and intentions to get COVID-19 vaccines. We conducted an online observational pilot study with 203 participants and used self-report questionnaires to assess perceived stress and vulnerability to disease, beliefs about a dangerous world, pandemic-related stressors, living conditions, attitudes and intentions toward the vaccines and trust in government management of the COVID-19 pandemic. The participants reporting high levels of trust in government and high levels of stress were more likely to have positive attitudes toward COVID-19 vaccines, although these two effects are at least partially independent of each other. We discuss how to improve the communication around COVID-19 vaccine policies.

Literature shows that intolerance of uncertainty can negatively affect health professionals' medical decision-making process. However, there is no intolerance of uncertainty measurement tools in French, so this study aimed at validating the Intolerance of Uncertainty Scale-12 (IUS-12) in French, and a version of the IUS-12 adapted for healthcare professionals (IUS-12-H). We asked health professionals to complete our two scales of interest, as well as several scales covering related constructs. Five hundred and sixteen health professionals completed French versions of the IUS-12 and the IUS-12-H, and our additional scales. Exploratory factor analyses showed that the IUS-12 and IUS-12-H scales had a two-factor structure as in the seminal article of Carleton et al. (2007). The IUS-12 and the IUS-11-H French versions show psychometric properties comparable to the original version indicating that they can be used as the seminal scales for French health professionals.

Background: Distrust of COVID-19 vaccines may hamper vaccination campaigns. We focused on the cognitive determinants of intentions to get vaccinated against COVID-19. We were interested in (i) the effects of stress, and (ii) the effects of self-protection systems on attitudes and intentions to get vaccinated with a COVID-19 vaccine. Methods: We conducted an online observational study with 203 French students (MAge = 19, SDAge = 2.52, Women = 173), in which we measured, through self-reported questionnaires, their perceived stress and vulnerability to disease, belief in a dangerous world, pandemic-related stressors living conditions, attitudes and intentions to get vaccinated, and confidence in the government's management of COVID-19. We conducted two multiple linear mediation analyses.Results: Participants who reported higher trust in the government and who reported higher stress levels were more likely to have positive attitudes toward the COVID-19 vaccine, although both these influences seem to be –at least partially - independent. Conclusions: The factor that most robustly predicted both attitudes and intentions to vaccinate was confidence in the information provided by the government and its ability to manage the pandemic in general. Our analyses suggest the existence of two profiles of people likely to have positive attitudes toward vaccination: those who trust the government and are not stressed by vaccination, and those who do not trust the government but would get vaccinated to reduce their stress. We discuss how to improve the effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccine policies through communication.