Background:Burnout has been described as a prolonged response to chronic emotional and interpersonal stress on the job that is often the result of a period of expending excessive effort at work while having too little recovery time. Healthcare workers who work in a stressful medical environment, especially in an intensive care unit (ICU), may be particularly susceptible to burnout. In healthcare workers, burnout may affect their well-being and the quality of professional care they provide and can, therefore, be detrimental to patient safety. The objectives of this study were: to determine the prevalence of burnout in the ICU setting; and to identify factors associated with burnout in ICU professionals.Methods:The original articles for observational studies were retrieved from PubMed, MEDLINE, and Web of Science in June 2016 using the following MeSH terms: “burnout” and “intensive care unit”. Articles that were published in English between January 1996 and June 2016 were eligible for inclusion. Two reviewers evaluated the abstracts identified using our search criteria prior to full text review. To be included in the final analysis, studies were required to have employed an observational study design and examined the associations between any risk factors and burnout in the ICU setting.Results:Overall, 203 full text articles were identified in the electronic databases after the exclusion of duplicate articles. After the initial review, 25 studies fulfilled the inclusion criteria. The prevalence of burnout in ICU professionals in the included studies ranged from 6% to 47%. The following factors were reported to be associated with burnout: age, sex, marital status, personality traits, work experience in an ICU, work environment, workload and shift work, ethical issues, and end-of-life decision-making.Conclusions:The impact of the identified factors on burnout remains poorly understood. Nevertheless, this review presents important information, suggesting that ICU professionals may suffer from a high level of burnout, potentially threatening patient care. Future work should address the effective management of the factors negatively affecting ICU professionals.

These results showed that occupational injury can cause long-term psychological impact in workers. Key demographic and injury characteristics may enhance the identification of at-risk occupational injured workers who would benefit from targeted screening and early intervention efforts.

After considering all other factors, psychological symptoms further predicted poorer probability of returning to work after occupational injury, and phobic-anxiety was the most significant symptom predicting poor RTW. Development of preventive measures among injured workers according to the risk factors identified in this study is warranted.

The visual health of microscope workers is an important occupational health concern, and a previous study suggested an association between lighting problems (e.g., flashing light, insufficient lighting) and eye symptoms among cleanroom workers in the electronics industry. This study aimed to explore the association between eye symptoms and lighting problems, as well as light-related counteracting behaviors among microscope workers in the cleanroom environment. Ninety-one cleanroom workers aged 20 years or older were recruited from an electronics factory. The socio-demographic factors, work-related factors, eye symptoms, and lighting problems were assessed using a self-administered questionnaire. There were 92.3% female participants in this study. Among all participants, 41.8% and 63.7% had symptoms of dry eye and eye fatigue, respectively. The counteracting behaviors of needing to move closer (adjusted odds ratio (aOR) = 3.47, 95% CI = 1.11 to 10.88) was significantly associated with dry eye symptoms. Workers who were more experienced at the job (aOR = 1.03, 95% CI = 1.01 to 1.06) and had shorter break times (aOR = 0.94, 95% CI = 0.91 to 0.98) were more likely to have eye fatigue. As a result of these findings, this study suggests that good lighting and adequate break times are crucial to improve the visual health of cleanroom microscope workers.

(1) Background: The importance of physician-patient communication and its effect on patient satisfaction has become a hot topic and has been studied from various aspects in recent years. However, there is a lack of systematic reviews to integrate recent research findings into patient satisfaction studies with physician communication. Therefore, this study aims to systematically examine physician communication’s effect on patient satisfaction in public hospitals. (2) Methods: Using a keywords search, data was collected from five databases for the papers published until October 2021. Original studies, observational studies, intervention studies, cross-sectional studies, cohort studies, experimental studies, and qualitative studies published in English, peer-reviewed research, and inpatients who communicated with the physician in a hospital met the inclusion criteria. (3) Results: Overall, 11 studies met the inclusion criteria from the 4810 articles found in the database. Physicians and organizations can influence two determinants of inpatient satisfaction in physician communication. Determinants of patient satisfaction that physicians influence consist of amounts of time spent with the patient, verbal and nonverbal indirect interpersonal communication, and understanding the demands of patients. The organization can improve patient satisfaction with physician communication by the organization’s availability of interpreter service and physician workload. Physicians’ communication with inpatients can affect patient satisfaction with hospital services. (4) Conclusions: To improve patient satisfaction with physician communication, physicians and organizational determinants must be considered.

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In this study, we observed a reversal of body weight gain but no recoveries in red blood cells or haematocrit or haemoglobin levels after stopping pioglitazone for 10 months in patients treated with pioglitazone for 38 months. This finding should prompt a reconsideration of the sustained effect of thiazolidinediones on the haematopoietic system in patients with Type 2 diabetes.

BackgroundIndividual physicians and physician-associated factors may influence patients’/surrogates’ autonomous decision-making, thus influencing the practice of do-not-resuscitate (DNR) orders. The objective of this study was to examine the influence of individual attending physicians on signing a DNR order.MethodsThis study was conducted in closed model, surgical intensive care units in a university-affiliated teaching hospital located in Northern Taiwan. The medical records of patients, admitted to the surgical intensive care units for the first time between June 1, 2011 and December 31, 2013 were reviewed and data collected. We used Kaplan–Meier survival curves with log-rank test and multivariate Cox proportional hazards models to compare the time from surgical intensive care unit admission to do-not-resuscitate orders written for patients for each individual physician. The outcome variable was the time from surgical ICU admission to signing a DNR order.ResultsWe found that each individual attending physician’s likelihood of signing do-not-resuscitate orders for their patients was significantly different from each other. Some attending physicians were more likely to write do-not-resuscitate orders for their patients, and other attending physicians were less likely to do so.ConclusionOur study reported that individual attending physicians had influence on patients’/surrogates’ do-not-resuscitate decision-making. Future studies may be focused on examining the reasons associated with the difference of each individual physician in the likelihood of signing a do-not-resuscitate order.