Population ageing is a major demographic shift of the 21st century, creating significant challenges for healthcare systems and nursing education. As the number of older adults grows, understanding how future healthcare professionals perceive ageing becomes increasingly important. Nursing students’ attitudes toward older adults can influence the quality of care they provide and their willingness to pursue geriatric nursing. This study explores nursing students’ perceptions of older adults’ mental health, quality of life, and depression symptoms using a mixed‑methods design. Sixty students enrolled in an academic nursing program in central Israel participated in the quantitative phase, completing two validated measures: the Mental Health Continuum–Short Form (MHC‑SF), assessing emotional, social, and psychological well‑being, and the CES‑D scale, assessing four categories of depression symptoms. Quantitative analyses included repeated‑measures ANOVA, Pearson correlations, and multiple regression. Qualitative interviews with a subgroup of students provided deeper insight into their views on ageing and well‑being. Findings show that students did not significantly differentiate between emotional, social, and psychological aspects of older adults’ mental health, suggesting they view mental well‑being in later life as a unified construct. However, they distinguish between types of depression symptoms, perceiving depressed affect and somatic or retarded activity as more salient indicators than lack of positive affect or interpersonal difficulties. Overall, the study underscores the need to strengthen gerontological content in nursing education. Enhancing students’ clinical exposure to older adults and improving training in recognizing diverse mental health and depression symptoms may help reduce age‑related stereotypes and foster more balanced professional attitudes toward ageing populations.
Health system resilience has emerged as a critical competency in health management education, yet pedagogical frameworks for teaching resilience through structured comparative analysis remain underdeveloped. This study addresses this gap by developing and demonstrating a replicable educational framework that integrates organizational resilience theory with comparative health policy analysis, specifically designed for graduate-level health management, public health, and public administration curricula. The study makes three distinct contributions to international health management education. Conceptually, it provides a unified analytical framework integrating macro-level policy analysis with meso-level institutional outcomes, enabling multi-scalar resilience teaching. Methodologically, it models rigorous secondary analysis research design accessible to graduate students in resource-constrained environments, supporting research literacy development. The pedagogical applications are immediate and concrete: the framework can be integrated directly into health systems governance courses, policy analysis modules, and crisis management curricula; the comparative findings provide structured case teaching material suitable for problem-based learning exercises; and the methodological transparency supports student-led comparative research projects. By explicitly connecting theoretical constructs, empirical evidence, and pedagogical implementation, the study advances evidence-informed curriculum development in health management education and provides a model for translating health systems research into teaching practice.
Teachers' occupational stress is an important topic in educational research, with implications for their well-being and performance. This study analysed the relationship between grit, defined as passion and perseverance for long-term goals, and the perception of occupational stress among primary school teachers in Romania, in the context of school year reorganisation from 2 semesters to 5 modules. This exploratory cross-sectional study included a sample of 158 primary education teachers from the northwestern region of Romania. Work-related stress was assessed through a questionnaire adapted from "School Teachers Job Stressor Scale" (Naono-Nagatomo et al., 2019), and the grit level was measured using the scale developed by Duckworth (2016). The results revealed differentiated levels of occupational stress, the highest being associated with the reorganisation of the academic year. The correlation analysis indicated significant negative relationships between grit levels and certain stress dimensions, particularly self-assessment of professional skills and peer relations, while the relationship with the overall stress was not significant. The qualitative data supported these findings, suggesting that grit facilitates stress management in specific contexts without equally influencing all dimensions of work-related stress. These preliminary findings emphasise the multidimensional nature of occupational stress and highlight the need for future research with larger, more representative samples to replicate and extend these associations.
Assistive technology represents an integral part of contemporary approaches in special education practice and is recognized within the system of inclusive education. In recent years, 13 resource centers in Serbia have been established to support children with developmental disabilities and their families in AT implementation. The aim of this study was to examine the attitudes and self-reported perceptions of competence, barriers, and beliefs of special educators employed in resource centers regarding the use of assistive technology in their practice. The study used the Attitude Towards Assistive Technology Scale and a custom-designed questionnaire assessing competencies, beliefs, and perceived barriers to AT use. The sample included 110 participants. The attitudes of special educators toward the use of assistive technology were predominantly positive. Regarding their self-reported perceptions related to AT use, a positive perception of its benefits was observed, as well as the identification of areas that represent challenges and limitations in its application. Most participants expressed a need for additional professional development in this field. Special educators hold positive attitudes toward the use of assistive technology and report diverse self-reported perceptions of competence, barriers, and beliefs related to AT implementation. There is a need for further education, access to relevant information, and improved availability of resources.
This article presents the concept for the development and practical application of a method for solving professional problem situations in the activities of cooks in extreme conditions. Current realities are characterized by the emergence of professional contexts that go beyond the standard technical and technological processes of the food industry and can be qualified as extreme: military actions, natural disasters, man-made accidents, humanitarian crises, and disruptions to logistics or energy supply. Such conditions significantly transform the professional activities of cooks, as they create situations where traditional technologies, resources, and operating modes become inaccessible or unstable. This leads to the emergence of production problem situations that require the search for variable solutions while maintaining the need to ensure safe and adequate nutrition for consumers. This has actualized the need for theoretical substantiation and definition of the concept of "production problem situations in the extreme conditions of a cook's professional activity." A method based on a structural-functional model for describing a production problem situation is proposed for solving this type of situation. The method allows for determining the essence of the problem, identifying the element of the activity structure that generates it, and accordingly selecting effective ways to solve it and evaluate the obtained results. The practical implementation of the method is illustrated by the example of solving a problem situation related to organizing food preparation in a temporarily converted logistics center for evacuated persons under conditions of an unstable number of consumers, uneven arrival of people, and periodic interruptions in water and energy supply. The proposed method can be integrated into educational programs as a tool for training students to analyze and resolve production problem situations that arise in non-standard working conditions.
