The COVID-19 outbreak has led worldwide governments to take preventive measures to contain the spread of the virus and its extraordinary demands upon healthcare workers. Consequently, healthcare workers have been under high pressures, putting them at risk of developing adverse outcomes. The present study aims to investigate the psychological and organizational factors that contributed to physicians’ well-being during the pandemic. A total of 78 Italian physicians participated in the study. They completed a self-report questionnaire measuring efficacy beliefs, orientation towards patient engagement, job satisfaction, non-technical skills, organizational support, sense of belonging to the hospital, job satisfaction, and mental well-being. Physicians’ sense of belonging to their hospital, efficacy beliefs about their organizations and communication with patients, as well as non-technical skills related to communication and risk awareness were positively associated with job satisfaction. In addition, the latter and sense of belonging to own hospital were positively associated with mental well-being. These findings may guide policymakers and healthcare organizations managers to consider the potential psychosocial factors related to physicians’ well-being and the required preventive measures that can help in enhancing their human and organizational resources to cope with stressful situations such as the COVID-19 pandemic.

The COVID-19 outbreak has had a disruptive impact on the academic context and labor market. Indeed, the pandemic shock in such fields has been related to several changes with implications for young people’s careers and well-being. This two-wave longitudinal study, conducted in Italy, aimed to explore the predictiveness of some individual and organizational factors on students’ perceived employability and well-being. A total of 301 Italian students, aged between 18 and 33 (M = 20.63, SD = 1.99), completed a self-report questionnaire measuring career ambition, university reputation, university commitment, technostress related to technology-enhanced learning, perceived employability, and mental well-being at both time points. A path analysis showed that career ambition, university reputation, and organizational commitment positively predicted employability, which, in addition to such variables, positively affected well-being. In contrast, technostress was identified as a risk factor both for students’ perceptions of finding a job and for their well-being. These findings provide a theoretical contribution to a better understanding of the factors involved in undergraduates’ perceived employability and well-being. Moreover, they suggest the need to improve academic-related variables to enhance individuals’ resources in coping with the pandemic challenges.

Self‐objectification is a pervasive phenomenon, related to specific socio‐cultural context, that can lead to many psychological and interpersonal consequences. With the present study, we investigated the correlates of self‐objectification in young Italian women analyzing both its traditional antecedents and its consequences for self‐presentation on social network sites (SNS). A total of 676 Italian university female students completed a self‐reported questionnaire on self‐objectification, internalization of a thin‐ideal and related influences, internalized sexism, self‐esteem, SNS use, selfie‐posting on SNS and selfies’ manipulation. Results indicated that media and peers, but not family pressures, were positively associated with thin‐ideal internalization, which, in turn, was positively associated with self‐objectification. Moreover, both sexism and self‐esteem were significantly associated with self‐objectification. Regarding self‐objectification consequences for SNS usage, results revealed that self‐objectification was positively associated with time spent on SNS, frequency of selfie‐posting and selfie‐editing. It was concluded that objectification theory can be extended into the context of image‐related behaviors on SNS. Results suggest that young women with low self‐esteem, traditional attitudes toward gender roles and high levels of internalization of thin‐ideal may report high levels of self‐objectification which, in turn, may be related to specific self‐promotion behaviors on social media. The limitations of the present study, particularly in terms of sampling and implications for future research on selfie‐behavior are discussed.

In recent years, there has been an increased implementation of massive open online courses (MOOCs). This teaching model plays a pivotal role in online education because it can provide high-quality learning resources to numerous students with great feasibility, shaping training courses according to their different learning requirements. Although the widespread adoption of MOOCs in medical education has led to numerous benefits for undergraduate and graduate doctors, their role remains unclear, suggesting the need to analyze the key factors of such a learning method in this field. To achieve this aim, a scoping review, in line with the PRISMA method for qualitative synthesis, was performed by considering studies published from 2016 to 2021, written in English, and including the physician population. Through this literature analysis, the following main areas of interest came to light: (1) pedagogical approaches, (2) MOOC structure-related variables, (3) participant-related variables, and (4) MOOCs vs. traditional courses. The review provides valuable evidence on factors underlying MOOCs effectiveness, which might be helpful for academic and healthcare organizations in designing effective training courses for physicians.

Since social networks have become an essential part of young people’s lives, the present study examined the relationship between sharing and manipulating selfies on Instagram and related outcomes on body image. A total of 350 young adults from Italy and Portugal participated in the study. They completed measures on selfie-sharing, selfie-manipulation, appearance-based comparison, internalization of beauty ideals, and shame for their bodies. Gender, nationality, and type of account (public/private) were hypothesized to moderate the examined relationships. The results partially confirmed the hypothesized model, indicating that sharing selfies was positively associated with body shame through appearance-based comparison, which was also positively associated with beauty-ideal internalization. In contrast with the hypotheses, selfie manipulation was negatively associated with body shame. Gender and type of social networks account moderated these relationships, whereas no moderation role was found with regard to nationality. Findings showed that there are specific behaviors on Instagram associated with the feeling of shame about one’s own body. Limitations of the present study and implications for future research are discussed from a sociocultural perspective.