Due to a pandemic caused by a coronavirus, teaching in Croatian schools in the second half of the school year 2019/2020 and at Croatian universities in the summer semester of the same academic year took place online. It has introduced various synonymous, paronymous or insufficiently precise terms into the public and professional discourse, which motivates us to re-examine their meaning and the scope of the concept to which they refer. This paper focuses on defining seven selected terms, aiming to contribute (...) to a more precise usage of e-teaching terminology. Furthermore, after searching web pages in the Croatian language by keywords, we single out examples of their use. These are the following terms: e-learning, e- teaching, e-classes, web-based teaching, online teaching, virtual teaching and distance education. (shrink)

The main goal of intensive care medicine is helping patients survive acute threats to their lives, while preserving and restoring life quality. Because of medical advancements, it is now possible to sustain life to an extent that would previously have been difficult to imagine. However, the goals of medicine are not to preserve organ function or physiological activity but to treat and improve the health of a person as a whole. When dealing with medical futilities, physicians and other members of (...) the care team should be aware of some ethical principles. Knowing these principles could make decision-making easier, especially in cases where legal guidelines are insufficient or lacking. Understanding of these principles can relieve the pressure that healthcare professionals feel when they have to deal with medical futility. Efforts should be made to promote an ethics of care, which means caring for patients even after further invasive treatment has been deemed to be futile. Treatments that improve patients’ comfort and minimize suffering of both patients and their families are equally as important as those aimed at saving patients’ lives. (shrink)

U ovom radu predstavljena su mišljenja i stavovi nastavnika matematike o ispitima iz matematike na Državnoj maturi u Hrvatskoj. Cilj rada bio je ispitati mišljenja nastavnika o prikladnosti srednjoškolskih udžbenika matematike za pripremu učenika za ispite državne mature, općim zahtjevima ispita, ocjenjivanju i bodovanju na ispitima te o uspjehu učenika. Istraživanje je provedeno putem upitnika na prigodnom uzorku od 308 nastavnika matematike koji poučavaju u srednjim školama u Hrvatskoj. Rezultati pokazuju da nastavnici matematike školske udžbenike ne smatraju prikladnima za pripremu (...) učenika za ispit više razine. Nastavnici smatraju da je vrijeme predviđeno za ispit više razine nedovoljno. Većinom su zadovoljni rezultatima svojih učenika, no neopredijeljeni su po pitanju kriterija i bodovanja na maturi. Nastavnici strukovnih škola u većoj su mjeri nezadovoljni zahtjevima i postavkama državne mature u odnosu na gimnazijske nastavnike. Rezultati ovog empirijskog istraživanja mogu poslužiti kao polazište za ponovno razmatranje općih zahtjeva državne mature iz matematike nakon više od deset godina nakon njezina uvođenja. (shrink)

Use of patient clinical photographs requires specific attention to confidentiality and privacy. Although there are policies and procedures for publishing clinical images, there is little systematic evidence about what patients and health professionals actually think about consent for publishing clinical images. We investigated the opinions of three stakeholder groups at 3 academic healthcare institutions and 37 private practices in Croatia. The questionnaire contained patient photographs with different levels of anonymization. All three respondent groups considered that more stringent forms of permission (...) for were needed identifiable photographs than for those with higher levels of anonymization. When the entire face was presented in a photo only 33% of patients considered that written permission was required, compared with 88% of the students and 89% of the doctors. Opinions about publishing patient photographs differed among the three respondent samples: almost half of the patients thought no permission was necessary compared with one-third of students and doctors. These results show poor awareness of Croatian patients regarding the importance of written informed consent as well as unsatisfactory knowledge of health professionals about policies on the publication of patients’ data in general. In conclusion, there is a need for increasing awareness of all stakeholders to achieve better protection of patient privacy rights in research and publication. (shrink)

Unfounded—conspiracy and health—beliefs about COVID-19 have accompanied the pandemic worldwide. Here, we examined cross-nationally the structure and correlates of these beliefs with an 8-item scale, using a multigroup confirmatory factor analysis. We obtained a two-factor model of unfounded (conspiracy and health) beliefs with good internal structure (average CFI = 0.98, RMSEA = 0.05, SRMR = 0.04), but a high correlation between the two factors (average latent factor correlation = 0.57). This model was replicable across 50 countries (total N = 13,579), (...) as evidenced by metric invariance between countries (CFI = 0.96, RMSEA = 0.06, SRMS = 0.07) as well as scalar invariance across genders (CFI = 0.98, RMSEA = 0.04, SRMS = 0.03) and educational levels (CFI = 0.98, RMSEA = 0.04, SRMS = 0.03). Also, lower levels of education, more fear of COVID-19, and more cynicism were weakly associated with stronger conspiracy and health beliefs. The study contributes to knowledge about the structure of unfounded beliefs, and reveals the potential relevance of affective (i.e., fear of COVID-19) and cognitive (i.e., cynicism) factors along with demographics, in endorsing such beliefs. In summary, we obtained cross-cultural evidence for the distinctiveness of unfounded conspiracy and health beliefs about COVID-19 in terms of their structure and correlates. (shrink)

Unfounded—conspiracy and health—beliefs about COVID-19 have accompanied the pandemic worldwide. Here, we examined cross-nationally the structure and correlates of these beliefs with an 8-item scale, using a multigroup confirmatory factor analysis. We obtained a two-factor model of unfounded (conspiracy and health) beliefs with good internal structure (average CFI = 0.98, RMSEA = 0.05, SRMR = 0.04), but a high correlation between the two factors (average latent factor correlation = 0.57). This model was replicable across 50 countries (total N = 13,579), (...) as evidenced by metric invariance between countries (CFI = 0.96, RMSEA = 0.06, SRMS = 0.07) as well as scalar invariance across genders (CFI = 0.98, RMSEA = 0.04, SRMS = 0.03) and educational levels (CFI = 0.98, RMSEA = 0.04, SRMS = 0.03). Also, lower levels of education, more fear of COVID-19, and more cynicism were weakly associated with stronger conspiracy and health beliefs. The study contributes to knowledge about the structure of unfounded beliefs, and reveals the potential relevance of affective (i.e., fear of COVID-19) and cognitive (i.e., cynicism) factors along with demographics, in endorsing such beliefs. In summary, we obtained cross-cultural evidence for the distinctiveness of unfounded conspiracy and health beliefs about COVID-19 in terms of their structure and correlates. (shrink)