The ravages caused by the disease known as COVID-19 has led to a worldwide healthcare and social emergency requiring an effective combined effort from everyone to reduce contagion. Under these circumstances, the perception of the disease is going to have a relevant role in the individual’s psychological adjustment. However, at the present time there is no validated instrument for evaluating adult perception of threat from COVID-19. Considering the importance of perception or representation of the disease in a state of social alert, our study intended to validate an instrument measuring the psychological process of the disease caused by the coronavirus (COVID-19). In view of the above, this study evaluated the factor structure and reliability of the version of the Illness Perception Questionnaire (IPQ) for COVID-19 in a sample of adults. The sample consisted of 1014 Spanish adults (67.2% women and 32.8% men). The exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses supported a unidimensional model of the scale, which was the one that showed the best fit and explained 43.87% of the variance. This brief version has adequate psychometric properties and may be used to evaluate the perception of threat from COVID-19 in an adult Spanish population. The validation of this instrument contributes to progress in representation of COVID-19 in our culture.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, different conspiracies have risen, with the most dangerous being those focusing on vaccines. Today, there exists a social media movement focused on destroying the credibility of vaccines and trying to convince people to ignore the advice of governments and health organizations on vaccination. Our aim was to analyze a COVID-19 antivaccination message campaign on Twitter that uses Spanish as the main language, to find the key elements in their communication strategy. Twitter data were retrieved from 14 to 28 December using NodeXL software. We analyzed tweets in Spanish, focusing on influential users, most influential tweets, and content analysis of tweets. The results revealed ordinary citizens who ‘offer the truth’ as the most important profile in this network. The content analysis showed antivaccine tweets (31.05%) as the most frequent. The analysis of anti-COVID19 tweets showed that attacks against vaccine safety were the most important (79.87%) but we detected a new kind of message presenting the vaccine as a means of manipulating the human genetic code (8.1%). We concluded that the antivaccine movement and its tenets have great influence in the COVID-19 negationist movement. We observed a new topic in COVID-19 vaccine hoaxes that must be considered in our fight against misinformation.

One of the major lessons learned from the COVID-19 pandemic was the importance of caring for the mental health of populations

Introduction: The approach and use of the term “humanization” is very much present in healthcare. However, instruments for measuring the concept of the humanization of care are yet to be designed and developed. Objective: The main objective of this study was to evaluate and validate the Healthcare Professional Humanization Scale (HUMAS) for nursing professionals. Method: The sample was made up of 338 adults, who were nurses working at health centers and hospitals, and aged between 22 and 56. Results: The results of the analyses confirm that the Healthcare Professional Humanization Scale (HUMAS) has an adequate construct validity and reliability, and defines the humanization of care as a multidimensional construct, made up of five factors: Affection, Self-efficacy, Emotional understanding, Optimistic disposition and Sociability. Conclusions: The new HUMAS scale may be an easily administered and coded instrument for approaching the humanization of care, not only in research, but also in practice.

Introduction: At the present time, technological advances have increased the technification of healthcare services, in which high priority is given to efficiency and results achieved, leading healthcare personnel to prioritize administrative and procedural aspects to the detriment of humanization of care and the work environment. Objective: This study was intended to continue progress in research on the work environment based on the humanization construct by analyzing the explanatory value of emotional intelligence and empathy in nursing personnel. Materials and Methods: The study was quantitative, observational, and cross-sectional. The sample was made up of 338 Spanish nurses with a mean age of 32.20 (SD = 7.54; range 22–56). The instruments employed for analysis were the Healthcare Professional Humanization Scale (HUMAS), Brief Emotional Intelligence Inventory for Adults, and Basic Empathy Scale (BES). Results: Mood and stress management—both emotional intelligence components—and cognitive empathy explained over half (51%) of the variability found in humanization of care in a sample of nurses. Furthermore, the mediation models proposed emphasized the mediating role of cognitive empathy in stress management and improvement in mood and its relationship to humanization. Conclusion: It is recommended that healthcare professionals reinforce their personal competencies in order to tend to the needs of their patients empathetically and improve emotional competencies for coping successfully with potentially stressful situations.

The COVID-19 pandemic has generated a great impact worldwide both on the population health but also on an economic and social level. In this health emergency, a key element has been and still is the need for information, which has become a daily concern for many people. Social media represent powerful tools for searching and gathering health-related information, thus becoming a new place where health authorities need to be present to disseminate information of preventive measures like vaccines against COVID-19, as well as try to block information against these public health measures. The main goal of this study was to analyze the role that healthcare professionals have in Twitter to support the campaign of public institutions on vaccination against COVID-19. To address this study, an analysis of the messages sent on Twitter containing the hashtag #yomevacuno, between 12 December 2020 was developed using the NodeXL software (Social Media Research Foundation, Redwood, CA, USA), focusing on content analysis of tweets and users’ accounts to identify healthcare professionals. The results show that healthcare professionals represent only 11.38% of users, being responsible for 6.35% of impressions generated by the network #yomevacuno. We can observe that traffic information generated by healthcare professionals is not significant in comparison with institutions (p = 0.633), but it is compared to common users (p = 0.0014). The most active healthcare professionals were pharmacists (40.17%), nurses (27.17%), and physicians (12.14%). Their activity (90.43% of messages) was mainly focused on sharing messages generated by other users’ accounts. From original content generated by healthcare professionals, only 78.95% had a favorable storytelling on the vaccine, but without sharing information about vaccines or vaccination. As a conclusion for this study, the participation of healthcare professionals in the dissemination and generation of information within the #yomevacuno communication strategy, led by the Spanish Ministry of Health, has been scarce. We emphasize the need to enhance communication skills in social networks to support public health campaigns through these increasingly important social media.