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Purpose: Teaching social science might benefit from using students' metaphorical understanding. Metaphors help people to better understand abstract concepts by breaking them down into more familiar ones. This essay attempts to approximate students' metaphors of politics to improve social science education's efforts in shaping politically mature citizens. Method: Taking three single interviews with students attending senior classes in high schools in Hamburg, Germany, this paper analyses metaphors they use to describe politics. It categorizes them and puts them into a larger context in the form of systematic metaphors providing an approximation to the students' metaphorical understanding. Findings: The findings suggest that students understand politics as shaping society, participation as passing upwards people's interests, governance as guidance, and human life as the foundation for society. However, more research is necessary, such as analysing more students' metaphors or using issue-related drawings. Practical implications: Teachers can use these findings to initialize a conceptual reconstruction. They could ask students to draw a "Grafiz" using the terms suggested above and having a better access to students' metaphorical understanding of a topic. That helps the teacher to select appropriate material for their teaching units.

Background: Due to the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, healthcare workers (HCWs) are experiencing tremendous levels of emotional and physical stress. Hospitals are trying to help personnel cope with work-related pressure. The aim of this study was to assess HCWs' awareness and utilization of counseling and support services during the pandemic, HCWs' unmet counseling and support needs, and the type and content of these services., Methods: A cross-sectional online survey was conducted from January to June 2021 through the German national research organization Network University Medicine (NUM). All participating hospitals (6 in total) were asked to inform their employees about the study., Results: A total of 1,495 HCWs were included in the analysis. Of these, 42.8% ( n  = 637) were frontline HCWs (who had contact with COVID-19 patients), 23.1% ( n  = 344) were second-line HCWs (who only had contact with non-COVID-19 patients) and 34.1% ( n  = 508) had no contact with any patients. Participating hospitals offer various counseling and support services for their staff. The percentage of respondents who were unaware of available counseling and support services ranged from 5.0 to 42.0%. Depending on the type of counseling and support services, 23.0-53.6% of the respondents indicated that counseling and support services were provided but not used, while 1.7-11.6% indicated that, despite the need for them, such services were not available. HCWs' overall satisfaction with the provided counseling and support services and their unmet support needs differed by patient contact: Frontline HCWs reported more unmet needs for counseling and support than second-line HCWs, while second-line HCWs reported more unmet needs than HCWs without patient contact., Conclusion: The results indicate that hospitals should make more efforts to inform HCWs about available counseling and support services. Hospitals could also create networks where HCWs could share information about the type and content of services and their experiences with various counseling and support services. These steps would enable hospitals to respond more quickly and effectively to the problems facing HCWs during pandemics., Competing Interests: The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest., (Copyright © 2023 Diehl, Mülder, Imm, Kegel, Tolksdorf, Wiegand, Röthke, Tüscher, Lieb, Walter, Liebe, Maicher, Hellwig, Adorjan, Unterecker, Beutel and Rose.)

Background: A critical factor in achieving widespread immunity against COVID-19 is the willingness of previously unvaccinated individuals to get vaccinated. Medical staff play a key role in this, as they ensure healthcare during the pandemic and for many serve as a source of information about vaccinations. Among the factors that negatively influence the general willingness to get vaccinated are conspiracy assumptions and the spread of misinformation., Objective: The willingness of hospital staff in Germany to get vaccinated and various influencing variables were examined to obtain indicators that could help increase the general willingness to get vaccinated., Methods: Between January and June 2021, a voluntary and anonymous online survey conducted as part of the egePan joint project of the national network for university medicine (funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research) was used to assess the willingness to be vaccinated, individual social characteristics, the belief in conspiracy assumptions, and communication items in German hospitals., Results: In comparison with the general population, physicians and scientific staff in particular indicated an increased willingness to get vaccinated. Conspiracy assumptions were not very widespread but most frequent among administrative and nursing staff. Conspiracy assumptions were negatively associated with the willingness to get vaccinated. Predictors for a higher willingness to get vaccinated were the perceived safety and effectiveness of vaccinations and a higher age., Discussion: Since the perceived safety and effectiveness of vaccinations have a positive effect on the willingness to get vaccinated, educational work and transparent information transfer could counteract the spread of conspiracy assumptions and increase vaccination rates among hospital staff., (© 2022. The Author(s).)

Objectives: To analyse differences in uptake of the insecticide permethrin in wearers of non-impregnated and permethrin impregnated battle dress uniforms (BDU) in Afghanistan and Germany., Methods: In two separate studies, in April 2003-January 2004 (study I, n=549) and in February-April 2005 (study II, n=195), healthy female and male members of the German Federal Armed Forces were equipped with permethrin impregnated BDU (two sub-cohorts in Germany and one in Afghanistan) while members equipped with non-impregnated uniforms served as a control group. Human biomonitoring was conducted before, during and after wearing the uniforms by measuring permethrin metabolites in urine samples via GC-MS., Results: Subjects of the Afghan and German control groups had permethrin levels in the range of the German general population. In contrast, subjects wearing impregnated BDU had about 200-fold higher exposure levels. Within this group, subjects located in Afghanistan and smokers had significantly higher exposure levels. Internal exposure decreased with increasing duration of use of impregnated BDU., Conclusions: There is no evidence for a higher background permethrin contamination in military bases located in Afghanistan compared to Germany. Daily use of permethrin impregnated BDU is associated with significantly higher permethrin uptake compared to the general population. Hand-mouth contact by smoking can increase uptake which also seems to be influenced by the duration of use of impregnated BDU.

Introduction and Objective: Prevention of tick borne diseases in forestry workers is essentially based on the use of appropriate clothing. The objective of this pragmatic, randomized, controlled trial was to assess the potential benefit of permethrin-treated working trousers for the prevention of tick infestation during forestry work., Materials and Methods: N=164 male forestry workers were equipped for a period of 16 weeks with permethrin-treated (intervention group-I) or untreated work trousers (control group-II). Subgroups, according to the use of trousers with (I-1, II-1) or without cut protection lining (I-2, II-2) were constituted. Tick infestation (quantity of ticks on the body surface) was assessed by questionnaire after 16 workdays. Control and intervention groups were compared by calculating the infestation rate (percentage of subjects with ticks) and the average number of ticks per workday., Results: The infestation rate in the intervention group was significantly lower than in the control group (36.6 vs. 63.4%, p=0.001; Fisher-test). Further analysis revealed a significant reduction of tick infestation by permethrin treatment only for subjects wearing trousers without the cut protection lining (I-2: 34.2 vs. II-2: 80.0%, p<0.001), while users of cut protection trousers did not benefit from such treated trousers (I-1: 38.6 vs. II-1: 47.6%, n.s.). Similar results were found for comparisons based on the average number of ticks per workday., Conclusions: The use of permethrin-treated trousers does not completely prevent tick infestations. Improvement of tick protection has been shown only for some applications, but not in general. Additional prevention measures are therefore still indispensable.