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Background The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic led to the postponement of low-acuity surgical procedures in an effort to conserve resources and ensure patient safety. This study aimed to characterize patient-reported concerns about undergoing surgical procedures during the pandemic. Methods We administered a cross-sectional survey to patients who had their general and plastic surgical procedures postponed at the onset of the pandemic, asking about barriers to accessing surgical care. Questions addressed dependent care, transportation, employment and insurance status, as well as perceptions of and concerns about COVID-19. Mixed methods and inductive thematic analyses were conducted. Results One hundred thirty-five patients were interviewed. We identified the following patient concerns: contracting COVID-19 in the hospital (46%), being alone during hospitalization (40%), facing financial stressors (29%), organizing transportation (28%), experiencing changes to health insurance coverage (25%), and arranging care for dependents (18%). Nonwhite participants were 5 and 2.5 times more likely to have concerns about childcare and transportation, respectively. Perceptions of decreased hospital safety and the consequences of possible COVID-19 infection led to delay in rescheduling. Education about safety measures and communication about scheduling partially mitigated concerns about COVID-19. However, uncertainty about timeline for rescheduling and resolution of the pandemic contributed to ongoing concerns. Conclusions Providing effective surgical care during this unprecedented time requires both awareness of societal shifts impacting surgical patients and system-level change to address new barriers to care. Eliciting patients’ perspectives, adapting processes to address potential barriers, and effectively educating patients about institutional measures to minimize in-hospital transmission of COVID-19 should be integrated into surgical care.

Derived from a larger project that is my doctoral thesis, the aim of this research is to investigate the sexual subjectivities of masculine-identified lesbians in Singapore, and, in doing so, examine what it means to be a masculine-identified lesbian within the heteronormative context of Singapore. Through a qualitative study of narratives from 27 different masculine-identified lesbians, I seek to address the following research questions: How do masculine-identified lesbians in Singapore embody their identities? What encompasses the experiences of a masculine-identified in Singapore, particularly the ones unique to them? What emerged from data analysis is this paper, which focuses on the first research question and discusses the fluid ways in which masculine-identified lesbians in Singapore ‘naturally’ or ‘unnaturally’ embody both traditional notions of masculinity and femininity as well as their reasons for doing so.

This is the first functional analysis in Drosophila of unfulfilled (unf; DHR51), the NR2E3 nuclear receptor superfamily ortholog of C. elegans fax-1 and human PNR. Both fax-1 and PNR mutations disrupt developmental events in a limited number of neurons, resulting in behavioral or sensory deficits. An analysis of two independent unf alleles revealed that unf mutants are characterized by one of two phenotypes. A proportion of the mutants eclosed but failed to expand their wings and were poorly coordinated. The remainder completed wing expansion but displayed severely compromised fertility. Consistent with the restricted neural expression of fax-1 and PNR, unf expression was detected in situ only in mushroom body neurons and a small number of other cells of the central nervous system (CNS). These data support the hypothesis that the wing expansion failure and the compromised fertility of unf mutants are the result of underlying neural defects.