This mixed-methods study showed that even though the Chinese nurses have moderately high sensitivity to the ethical issues encountered in hospitals, there is still room for improvement. The barriers to and facilitators of ethical sensitivity identified here offer new and important strategies to support and enhance the nurses' sensitivity to ethical issues.

Background: Nursing interns are an important backup force for nursing professionals, so efforts to strengthen their patient safety (PS) competencies are a major priority. To do so requires assessing the strengths and weaknesses of Chinese nursing students' PS competence and identifying the influencing factors. Methods: This was a multi-site, cross-sectional, web-based study that was carried out between September 2018 and January 2019. A national online survey was completed by 732 Chinese undergraduate nursing students. Our primary outcome factor was the Health Professional Education in Patient Safety Survey score. We also collected socio-demographic and clinical practice-related characteristics as independent variables. Multiple stepwise linear regression was performed to identify predictors of PS competence. Results: Chinese undergraduate nursing students were fairly confident in their clinical safety skills but less confident in what they learned about sociocultural or context-dependent aspects of PS and speaking up about PS, including effective communication and understanding human and environmental factors. Less than half of the students felt that they could approach someone engaging in unsafe practice and were reluctant to voice concern about adverse events. We observed significant differences in PS competence between students from different regions, across different PS learning styles (self-study and classroom theoretical study), with different self-assessed PS competence levels, and with experiences of adverse events (p < 0.05). These factors accounted for almost 15% of the total variance in PS competence scores (adjusted R 2 = 0.15, p = 0.00). Conclusions: The results of this study provide a better understanding of PS competence among final-year nursing students in China. Our findings may help nursing educators or healthcare organizations to cultivate and improve PS competence by establishing documented policies or by improving the efficacy of intervention.

The two-factor MSQ-R-CV (moral responsibility and strength, and sense of moral burden) is a linguistically and culturally appropriate instrument for assessing ethical sensitivity among Chinese nurses.

The standard treatment choice for cancer metastasis has been systemic management, including cytotoxic chemotherapy, hormonal manipulation, and targeted therapy. Emerging evidence has shown an oligometastatic state, an intermediate state between limited primary cancer and polymetastatic cancer, in which local therapy for metastatic lesions results in satisfactory survival comparable to non-metastatic disease. We provide a comprehensive introduction of evidence from experimental and clinical studies in favor of the oligometastatic phenotype, we review the efficacy and safety of surgery and stereotactic body radiotherapy in the treatment of oligometastases, and finally, we discuss the way to differentiate the oligometastatic state from polymetastasis.

Quaternary ammonium compounds (QACs) have been used widely in medicine, owing to their antimicrobial properties. They also have strong permeability, stable performance, low skin irritation, low toxicity, low corrosion, lasting biological effects and so on, comparing with other antimicrobial agents. At the end of last century, polymerizable quaternary ammonium antimicrobial monomers had been synthesized and applied in dentistry, in order to reduce or prevent microbial biofilm formation on dental materials surfaces. This review aims to discuss the current progress of QACs applied in composite resin, adhesive systems, acrylic resin, glass ionomer cement and endodontic materials, regarding to their antimicrobial potential, mechanical properties, and biocompatibility.