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Higher education institutions (HEIs) worldwide have been deeply affected by the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic and subsequent lockdown measures. HEIs are environments at high risk of COVID-19 diffusion, due to the high number of people sharing the same environment, and complex to protect, because of the multiple functions present (e.g. teaching rooms, research facilities, dormitories). Protection of HEIs is therefore a serious, but apparently neglect, public health issue. Italy was the first country to be heavily hit in Europe by COVID-19. Italian HEIs had to quickly respond to the emergency with multifaceted interventions to protect all the people on campus while guaranteeing the continuity of research and teaching activities. The purpose of this viewpoint is to propose and discuss a list of priority actions for the protection of HEIs, based on international guidelines and the experience of a small size Italian Public University and Research campus.

Objective: The aim of this study was to examine the extent to which socio-demographic variables affect women's satisfaction regarding antenatal and perinatal care.Design: To take into account the role of the context in shaping women's satisfaction, we used multilevel models, with women at the lower level, and the health districts of residence, or the hospitals in which the delivery took place, at the higher level.Setting: Tuscany (Italy).Participants: The study is based on a representative survey focused on the satisfaction and experience of 4598 new mothers who gave birth in one of the 25 hospitals in Tuscany (Italy) in 2012.Main Outcome Measures: Women's overall satisfaction in the prenatal period and their overall satisfaction during hospitalization for delivery.Results: Regarding pregnancy, women's satisfaction increased with age, and was generally higher among foreign women coming from non-Western countries and among highly educated women. Regarding delivery, age proved insignificant, whereas citizenship and education maintained the same association with satisfaction. Contrary to our expectations, the number of previous pregnancies turned out to be insignificant.Conclusions: Our findings suggest that the quality of maternity services was perceived differently in different socio-demographic groups: women's expectations affected satisfaction, but in different ways, in various socio-demographic groups, both during pregnancy and at delivery. Keeping these socio-demographic factors into account in the analysis of satisfaction may help organisations to identify areas where pregnancy and delivery services can be better targeted and where increasing awareness among professionals in their everyday practice is most needed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Healthcare systems are increasingly focusing on outcomes that are the endpoints of care: patient health status and patient satisfaction. The availability of patient satisfaction (PS) data has encouraged research on its relationship with other outcomes, such as mortality. In Italy, an inter-regional performance evaluation system (IRPES) provides 13 regional healthcare systems with a multidimensional assessment of appropriateness, efficiency, financial sustainability, effectiveness, and equity. For university hospitals, IRPES includes the percentage of patients leaving hospital against medical advice (PLHAMA) and mortality rates at the ward level. This paper investigates the relationship between PS and PLHAMA across and within regional healthcare systems in Italy. Secondly, PLHAMA is used as a PS proxy to investigate its relationship with mortality at the ward level in the IRPES university hospitals.Methods: PLHAMA and mortality rates were gathered from administrative data, and PS scores from patient surveys. We explored the association between PS and PLHAMA through a correlation analysis, using data for the 13 IRPES regions. We tested this relationship also at the clinical directorate level in 28 hospitals in Tuscany (5482 interviewed patients in 100 clinical directorates). Secondly, we explored the association between PLHAMA and mortality at the ward level through correlation and regression analyses, using data of 405 wards of eight clinical specialties within 24 IRPES university hospitals.Results: Lower PLHAMA rates were associated with a higher PS in both regional and clinical directorate levels. A positive association between PLHAMA and mortality was shown at the ward level for IRPES university hospitals, with different results for medical and surgical clinical specialties.Conclusions: PS is an important performance dimension that provides healthcare managers and professionals with useful insights for improving care quality and effectiveness. Based on the study results, the PLHAMA rate could be regularly measured to highlight patient dissatisfaction. Due to the association between PLHAMA and mortality, this study also provides evidence of the importance of the patient perspective in assessing the quality of healthcare services. This relationship proved to be significant for surgical clinical units, suggesting the need for further analysing outcomes considering their different determinants in medical and surgical care. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]