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Objective: The objective of this study was to assess the validity, reliability, and factorial structure of the Bengali-translated Depression, Anxiety, and Stress Scale—21 (DASS-21) among Bangladeshi health professionals. Methods: This study incorporated the cross-sectional study design, conducted among 312 health professionals from 28 health facilities in 18 districts across Bangladesh. The internal consistency and intraclass correlation coefficient of the DASS-21 was assessed. The confirmatory factor analyses was done to assess the fitness of different structural models of DASS-21. The concurrent validity was estimated by using the PHQ-9 and GAD-7 scales. Results: In total, 258 healthcare professionals (82.7%) out of 312 completed the whole survey questionnaire and were included in the study. The internal consistency of the DASS-21 exhibited satisfactory internal consistency (α = 0.93) and ICC = 0.92). The conventional three-factor model appeared to best fit the Bengali-translated DASS-21 scale. The discriminant validity has been affirmed by strong evidence. The convergent validity of Bengali DASS-21 was confirmed by the PHQ-9 and GAD-7 scales. Conclusions: This study found good validity, reliability, and suitability of the DASS-21 used among the Bangladeshi healthcare professionals. We warrant future research to explore the validity of this tool in other cohorts in Bangladesh. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Suicidal ideation is a complex phenomenon influenced by several predisposing, contextual, and mediating factors that seem more common among healthcare workers, especially nurses. We investigated the association of bullying and burnout with suicidal ideation among Bangladeshi nurses and identified the associated factors. We conducted a cross-sectional study among 1264 nurses in Bangladesh between February 2021 and July 2021. We applied a modified Poisson regression model with robust error variance to determine the association of bullying and burnout with suicidal ideation. Among 1264 nurses, the female was 882 (70.02%), and the mean age was 28.41 (SD = 5.54) years. The prevalence of high levels of suicidal ideation was 13.26%. In the Poison regression model, high risk bullying (RR = 6.22, 95% CI 3.13–12.38), targeted to bullying (RR = 7.61, 95% CI 3.53–16.38), and burnout (RR = 8.95, 95% CI 2.84–28.20) were found to be significantly associated with suicidal ideation. Furthermore, we found significant interaction between workplace bullying and burnout with suicidal ideation (p < 0.05). The high prevalence of bullying, burnout, suicidal ideation, and their association indicate an unsafe workplace for the nurses. Initiatives are needed to make a favorable work environment to improve nurses' overall mental health and reduce suicide ideation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hypertension is a leading cardiovascular risk factor with significant morbidity and mortality. Sometimes it remains difficult to find out the actual cause and to manage in a large segment of population. So, the ability to identify a contributing or secondary cause that is potentially curable for all patient with hypertension is of great importance and challenging. Endocrine hypertension is one of the common forms of secondary hypertension. Primary aldosteronism, pheochromocytoma, and other causes of mineralocorticoid excess are among the common causes of endocrine hypertension. Published literature were reviewed about their prevalence, clinical presentation, screening methods and specific management. Now day by day it's become more challenging for the clinicians to understand the pathophysiology, clinical spectrum of these diseases and improvement of the management protocol because of newer clinical, biochemical, and modern radiological approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Mucormycosis, a severe fungal infection, is an emerging public health concern during the COVID-19 pandemic. This study aimed to investigate the perception of mucormycosis among Bangladeshi healthcare workers. Results: An exploratory cross-sectional study was carried out among the Bangladeshi healthcare workers from May 25, 2021, to June 5, 2021. The study found 422 responses from the healthcare workers of Bangladesh. Among the respondents, nearly half of them (45.26%) were doctors (n = 191). This study explored that the healthcare workers' mucormycosis perception scores were significantly associated with their age, gender, profession, monthly income, marital status, job type, and death of friends and family members due to COVID-19. Conclusions: This study emphasized the healthcare workers' mucormycosis perception along with other associated factors. The findings could help policymakers to mitigate mucormycosis and related infectious diseases emergencies in the post-COVID-19 situation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: In 2013, Lepra Bangladesh (a non-government organization) and the National Leprosy Programme of the Directorate General of Health Services under the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Bangladesh implemented a 3 years project entitled "2015 and Beyond: Poverty Reduction through Strengthened Health Systems". The aims of this Health System Strengthening (HSS) project were to improve quality of leprosy services through service delivery, capacity development, curriculum development, improved collaboration, coordination, operational research and knowledge sharing to identify and treat leprosy in order to contribute to strengthen existing health systems. We evaluated the changes in knowledge of primary and community level healthcare providers about cardinal signs, course of leprosy treatment, and drug use for paucibacillary (PB) and multibacillary (MB) leprosy cases.Methods: We conducted two surveys using purposive sampling technique in two pilot districts: Bogra and Moulvibazar. The first survey was conducted before implementing the HSS project from March to June 2014 among 98 providers. The end-line survey was conducted in November 2015 and included 49 providers. The interview was conducted using the same pre-tested structured questionnaire. Descriptive statistics followed by further analysis was done including proportions, 90% confidence intervals, and p values were calculated for the selected variables.Results: The primary and community level healthcare providers demonstrated significant increases in knowledge on one cardinal sign (definite loss of sensation in a pale -hypopigmented- or reddish skin patch), doses and courses for the adult PB and MB cases and duration of Multi-Drug Therapy (MDT) course at the end line compared to the beginning of the project. All the providers except TB and Leprosy Control Assistants demonstrated statistically significant decreases in knowledge at the end-line compared to the baseline about supportive counseling.Conclusions: HSS activities including training and capacity building of the providers recorded significant increase of knowledge on types of leprosy, one cardinal sign, courses of MDT and drug use for the adult PB and MB cases and use MDT for leprosy treatment among the service providers at the end-line. Any health systems strengthening project should incorporate a capacity building approach within the programme all through. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]