Background: Online misinformation proliferation during the COVID-19 pandemic has become a major public health concern. Objective: We aimed to assess the prevalence of COVID-19 misinformation exposure and beliefs, associated factors including psychological distress with misinformation exposure, and the associations between COVID-19 knowledge and number of preventive behaviors. Methods: A cross-sectional online survey was conducted with 1049 South Korean adults in April 2020. Respondents were asked about receiving COVID-19 misinformation using 12 items identified by the World Health Organization. Logistic regression was used to compute adjusted odds ratios (aORs) for the association of receiving misinformation with sociodemographic characteristics, source of information, COVID-19 misinformation belief, and psychological distress, as well as the associations of COVID-19 misinformation belief with COVID-19 knowledge and the number of COVID-19 preventive behaviors among those who received the misinformation. All data were weighted according to the Korea census data in 2018. Results: Overall, 67.78% (n=711) of respondents reported exposure to at least one COVID-19 misinformation item. Misinformation exposure was associated with younger age, higher education levels, and lower income. Sources of information associated with misinformation exposure were social networking services (aOR 1.67, 95% CI 1.20-2.32) and instant messaging (aOR 1.79, 1.27-2.51). Misinformation exposure was also associated with psychological distress including anxiety (aOR 1.80, 1.24-2.61), depressive (aOR 1.47, 1.09-2.00), and posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms (aOR 1.97, 1.42-2.73), as well as misinformation belief (aOR 7.33, 5.17-10.38). Misinformation belief was associated with poorer COVID-19 knowledge (high: aOR 0.62, 0.45-0.84) and fewer preventive behaviors (≥7 behaviors: aOR 0.54, 0.39-0.74). Conclusions: COVID-19 misinformation exposure was associated with misinformation belief, while misinformation belief was associated with fewer preventive behaviors. Given the potential of misinformation to undermine global efforts in COVID-19 disease control, up-to-date public health strategies are required to counter the proliferation of misinformation.

Clinical placements are essential for students to develop clinical skills to qualify as nurses. However, various difficulties encountered by nursing students during their clinical education detract from developing clinical competencies. This constructivist grounded theory study aims to explore nursing students' experiences in clinical nursing education, and to identify the factors that influence the clinical education students receive. Twenty-one individual and six group semi-structured interviews were conducted with sixteen fourth year nursing students and four registered nurses. This research identified six factors that influence nursing students' clinical education: interpersonal, socio-cultural, instructional, environmental, emotional and physical factors. The research has developed a dynamic model of learning in clinical contexts, which offers opportunities to understand how students' learning is influenced multifactorially during clinical placements. The understanding and application of the model can improve nursing instructional design, and subsequently, nursing students' learning in clinical contexts.

Introduction: Children are widely recognized as a vulnerable population during disasters and emergencies. The COVID-19 pandemic, like a natural disaster, brought uncertainties and instability to the economic development of the society and social distancing, which might lead to child maltreatment. This study aims to investigate whether job loss, income reduction and parenting affect child maltreatment. Methods: We conducted a cross-sectional online survey of 600 randomly sampled parents aged 18 years or older who had and lived with a child under 10 years old in Hong Kong between 29 May to 16 June 2020. Participants were recruited from a random list of mobile phone numbers of a panel of parents. Of 779 recruited target parents, 600 parents completed the survey successfully via a web-based system after obtaining their online consent for participating in the survey. Results: Income reduction was found significantly associated with severe (OR = 3.29, 95% CI = 1.06, 10.25) and very severe physical assaults (OR = 7.69, 95% CI = 2.24, 26.41) towards children. Job loss or large income reduction were also significantly associated with severe (OR= 3.68, 95% CI = 1.33, 10.19) and very severe physical assaults (OR = 4.05, 95% CI = 1.17, 14.08) towards children. However, income reduction (OR = 0.29, 95% CI = 0.15, 0.53) and job loss (OR = 0.47, 95% CI = 0.28, 0.76) were significantly associated with less psychological aggression. Exposure to intimate partner violence between parents is a very strong and significant factor associated with all types of child maltreatment. Having higher levels of difficulty in discussing COVID-19 with children was significantly associated with more corporal punishment (OR = 1.19, 95% CI = 1.05, 1.34), whereas having higher level of confidence in managing preventive COVID-19 behaviors with children was negatively associated with corporal punishment (OR = 0.87, 95% CI = 0.76, 0.99) and very severe physical assaults (OR = 0.74, 95% CI = 0.58, 0.93). Conclusions: Income instability such as income reduction and job loss amplified the risk of severe and very severe child physical assaults but protected children from psychological aggression. Also, confidence in teaching COVID-19 and managing preventive COVID-19 behaviors with children was significantly negatively associated with corporal punishment during pandemic.