ObjectivesTo explore the prevalence and associated factors of burnout among five different medical professions in a regional teaching hospital.DesignCross-sectional study.SettingHospital-based survey.ParticipantsA total of 1329 medical professionals were recruited in a regional hospital with a response rate of 89%. These voluntary participants included 101 physicians, 68 physician assistants, 570 nurses, 216 medical technicians and 374 administrative staff.Primary and secondary outcome measuresDemographic data included gender, age, level of education and marital status, and work situations, such as position, work hours and work shifts, were obtained from an electronic questionnaire. Job strain and burnout were measured by two validated questionnaires, the Chinese version of the Job Content Questionnaire and the Copenhagen Burnout Inventory.ResultsAmong the five medical professions, the prevalence of high work-related burnout from highest to lowest was nurses (66%), physician assistants (61.8%), physicians (38.6%), administrative staff (36.1%) and medical technicians (31.9%), respectively. Hierarchical regression analysis indicated that job strain, overcommitment and low social support explained the most variance (32.6%) of burnout.ConclusionsPhysician assistant is an emerging high burnout group; its severity is similar to that of nurses and far more than that of physicians, administrative staff and medical technicians. These findings may contribute to the development of feasible strategies to reduce the stress which results in the burnout currently plaguing most hospitals in Taiwan.

Abstract. This paper explains how an attacker can efficiently factor 184 distinct RSA keys out of more than two million 1024-bit RSA keys downloaded from Taiwan's national "Citizen Digital Certificate" database. These keys were generated by government-issued smart cards that have built-in hardware random-number generators and that are advertised as having passed FIPS 140-2 Level 2 certification.These 184 keys include 103 keys that share primes and that are efficiently factored by a batch-GCD computation. This is the same type of computation that was used last year by two independent teams (USENIX Security 2012: Heninger, Durumeric, Wustrow, Halderman; Crypto 2012: Lenstra, Hughes, Augier, Bos, Kleinjung, Wachter) to factor tens of thousands of cryptographic keys on the Internet.The remaining 81 keys do not share primes. Factoring these 81 keys requires taking deeper advantage of randomness-generation failures: first using the shared primes as a springboard to characterize the failures, and then using Coppersmith-type partial-key-recovery attacks. This is the first successful public application of Coppersmith-type attacks to keys found in the wild.

ObjectivesTo explore the prevalence and associated factors of cardiovascular health as defined by the AHA among different job categories in health settings.MethodsThis is a cross-sectional and hospital-based survey. A total of 1329 medical professionals with a mean age of 38 years in a regional hospital in Taiwan were recruited. Information for seven combined indicators including blood pressure, fasting sugar, blood cholesterol, body mass index, time of physical activity, dietary pattern and smoking status was obtained from the employees' health profiles and questionnaires. Degree of job strain was evaluated by the Chinese version of the Job Content Questionnaire, which was derived from Karasek's demand-control model. Three types of cardiovascular health were identified as poor, intermediate and ideal.ResultsPrevalence of cardiovascular health in this study's population was ideal in 0.2% of the sample, intermediate in 20.6% and poor in 79.2%. There was a significantly higher percentage of poor health in workers with high strain (85.1%), and in the professions of nurse (85.3%) and physician assistant (83.1%). In the multivariate analysis, the only significant factor correlated with job strain was physical inactivity. After being adjusted, workers with high strain exhibit a higher prevalence of physical inactivity compared to those with low strain (OR 1.9, 95% CI 1.38 to −2.81).ConclusionsPhysical inactivity is the only significant factor correlated with job strain and is associated with a work situation characterised by high strain and the professions of nurse and physician assistant. Strategies for workplace health promotion should focus on employee health literacy and motivation to exercise regularly.