Tag: stress
Few Ideas on How Nurses Can Recover After Difficult Shifts
Most medical professionals agree that a nursing career can be constantly stressful. It comes with the territory of caring for those who are ill and injured. On an average day, well-trained nurses are more than capable of... read more
Penn Finds a Way to Reduce ICU Doctor Burnout
Reducing the length of rotations in medical ICUs in half also reduces rates of physician burnout in half while additionally improving feelings of fulfillment, according to a new pilot study from Penn Medicine. The results... read more
Physician Burnout Costs the U.S. Billions of Dollars Each Year
Doctors in the U.S. experience symptoms of burnout at almost twice the rate of other workers, often citing as contributors the long hours, a fear of being sued, and having to deal with growing bureaucracy, like filling out... read more
Mapping Sources of Noise in an ICU
Excessive noise in hospitals adversely affects patients' sleep and recovery, causes stress and fatigue in staff and hampers communication. The World Health Organization suggests sound levels should be limited to 35 decibels.... read more
Sedation in ICU patients – Need for Standardized Protocols
A Johns Hopkins-led study on sedation practices in critically ill patients in a resource-limited setting finds that deep sedation, agitation, and benzodiazepines were independently associated with worse clinical outcomes.... read more
Just as in Life and Medicine, Time Is the Biggest Challenge in Writing
For Matt Morgan, writing is a means to relieve work stress and turn it into something useful. In his first book, which will soon be published with Simon & Schuster, he shares stories from the intensive care unit, one of the... read more
Also Human: The Inner Lives of Doctors
From ER and M*A*S*H to Grey's Anatomy and House, the medical drama endures for good reason: we're fascinated by the people we must trust when we are most vulnerable. In Also Human, vocational psychologist Caroline Elton introduces... read more
One Nation Under Stress
In an eye-opening new film, Dr Sanjay Gupta explores the link between stress and the continuing fall in US life expectancy. In the documentary, which premiered on HBO, Gupta speaks with scientists, affected individuals and... read more
The Continuing Saga of Nurse Staffing
Registered nurses are the backbone of America's health systems, providing care and support to patients across the lifespan. Appropriate nurse staffing is critical to ensure safe and effective care for patients. Nurse staffing... read more
The Effects of Family Functioning on the Development of Posttraumatic Stress in Children and Their Parents Following Admission to the PICU
Both children and parents have alarmingly high rates of acute stress and posttraumatic stress following the child's PICU admission. Although family function did not emerge as a predictor in this study, further understanding... read more
The Effect of Diaries Written by Relatives for ICU Patients on PTSD
The results of this study will inform ICU nurses about the effects, strengths and limitations of prompting relatives to author a diary for the patient. This will allow the diary intervention to be tailored to the individual... read more
A Randomized Trial of Glutamine and Antioxidants in Critically Ill Patients
Critically ill patients have considerable oxidative stress. Glutamine and antioxidant supplementation may offer therapeutic benefit, although current data are conflicting. In this blinded 2-by-2 factorial trial, we randomly... read more
A Surprising Way to Decrease Stress in Nursing
What if I told you that it wasn't the patient load that was actually stressing nurses out in the workplace? Would you believe me? Most nurses go into the profession of nursing to care for sick patients. So even those days... read more
3 Tools Doctors Can Use to Prevent Burnout
A broad-based study published in the Mayo Clinic Proceedings in 2015 using the Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI) found that 54.4 percent of all physicians combined were experiencing at least one symptom of burnout, and there... read more
Even Proper Technique Exposes Nurses’ Spines To Dangerous Forces
In this close-up screenshot from a simulation video, you can see the exact moment NPR correspondent Daniel Zwerdling endured dangerous levels of stress on his spine while re-creating the way nurses push their patients in... read more
Patient-important outcomes in randomized controlled trials in critically ill patients
Patient-important outcomes are rarely primary outcomes in RCTs in critically ill patients published in 2013. Among them, mortality accounted for the majority. We promote the use of patient-important outcomes in critical care... read more
The Psychological Impact of Intensive Care
A period in intensive care is known to negatively affect patients' long term physical, cognitive and psychiatric health, in what's known as post-intensive care syndrome (PICS). Researchers from the University of Oxford sought... read more
The Year They Tried to Kill Me: Surviving a Surgical Internship… Even If the Patients Don’t
Not exactly the warm welcome I hoped for. But I was just a naive Wisconsin boy, fresh out of medical school and new to Oakland, California. I chose Highland Hospital for my surgical internship: an entire year filled with... read more
Humanizing the ICU
In the midst of trying to correct organ failures, clinicians may neglect to carefully consider what the patient is experiencing: to be on the brink of death, be unable to speak, be stripped naked, have strangers enter the... read more
Systematic Review of the Effects of ICU Noise on Sleep of Healthy Subjects and the Critically Ill
ICU patients exhibit disturbed sleeping patterns, often attributed to environmental noise, although the relative contribution of noise compared to other potentially disrupting factors is often debated. We therefore systematically... read more
ICU RN Job Dissatisfaction, Burnout Linked to Moral Distress
Job satisfaction and practice environment are associated with moral distress among critical care nurses, according to a study published online Jan. 3 in the American Journal of Critical Care. The researchers found that 56... read more
Poor Hospital Design Has an Impact on Staff, Patients, and Healthcare
Many hospitals in which I have worked have struggled with finances over the last 5 years. There has often been a ban on capital investment on new physical infrastructure projects even extended to repairs in some circumstances.... read more
