Montreal, August 25, 2011 — Job-related stress is catching up with the Canadians. A new study by Concordia University economists, published in BMC Public Health, has found that increased job stress causes workers to increasingly seek help from health professionals for physical, mental and emotional ailments linked to job stress. Indeed, the number of visits to healthcare professionals is up to 26 per cent for workers in high stress jobs.
Culture
Researchers from The Netherlands report that patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) who have higher levels of self-efficacy for physical activity are more likely to achieve their physical activity goals. According to the study now available in Arthritis Care & Research, a journal of the American College of Rheumatology (ACR), achievement of physical activity goals is associated with lower self-reported arthritis pain and increased health-related quality of life (HRQOL).
Although Americans are increasingly tolerant of the open expression of a variety of views, the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 have made most Americans reluctant to extend those freedoms to Muslim extremists, research released Aug. 25 by NORC at the University of Chicago shows.
The finding, reported in NORC's General Social Survey, illustrates a lingering impact of the horrific events from ten years ago, as well as the consequences on American public opinion of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, said Tom W. Smith, director of the survey.
The public should view crowd estimation with scepticism, say the authors of a study in Significance, the magazine of the Royal Statistical Society and the American Statistical Association. They suggest more reliable alternatives to current estimating methods.
A study by researchers at the Stein Institute for Research on Aging at the University of California, San Diego finds that successful aging and positive quality of life indicators correlate with sexual satisfaction in older women. The report, published online in the August edition of the Journal of the American Geriatric Society, also shows that self-rated successful aging, quality of life and sexual satisfaction appear to be stable even in the face of declines in physical health of women between the ages of 60 and 89.
As if President Barack Obama doesn't already have enough to worry about, a statistical analysis of presidential ranking surveys suggests that he is likely to be viewed as an "average" president by expert evaluators if he serves only one term, according to a Baylor University researcher.
TORONTO, Ont., Aug 23, 2011— Hearing dietary advice twice is enough for patients to get the significant benefits of lower cholesterol, according to a new study led by doctors at St. Michael's Hospital and the University of Toronto.
"We're seeing more and more people want to take their health into their own hands," said Dr. David Jenkins, the lead author of the study and director of the hospital's Risk Factor Modification Centre. Dr. Jenkins is also Canada's Research Chair in Nutrition and Metabolism at U of T's Department of Nutritional Sciences.
TORONTO, Ont., Aug. 23, 2011—Patients often do not renew prescriptions for their chronic diseases after they are released from hospital.
The number is even lower if the patient spent time in an intensive care unit, according to a new study by researchers at St. Michael's Hospital and the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Studies.
"If you don't continue your medication after hospital, that can have consequences, such as hospital readmissions, visits to the emergency department and, in rare cases, death," said Dr. Chaim Bell, the lead researcher.
New York, NY, August 24, 2011— Nearly three-quarters (72%) of people who lost their health insurance when they lost their jobs over the last two years said that they skipped needed health care or did not fill prescriptions because of cost, according to a new Commonwealth Fund report. The same proportion is also struggling with medical bills or medical debt, compared to about half (49%) who lost jobs but not their health insurance.
BEER-SHEVA, ISRAEL, August 24, 2011 – Stocks of companies that are committed to corporate social responsibility (CSR) policies perform statistically similarly to those corporations that do not have these programs, according to a new study by Ben-Gurion University of the Negev researchers.
New York, NY, August 24, 2011— Nearly three-quarters (72%) of people who lost their health insurance when they lost their jobs over the last two years said that they skipped needed health care or did not fill prescriptions because of cost, according to a new Commonwealth Fund report. The same proportion is also struggling with medical bills or medical debt, compared to about half (49%) who lost jobs but not their health insurance.
Corporations may use corporate social responsibility programs not only to improve their public image, but also to gain access to politicians, influence agendas and shape public health policy to best suit their own interests. In aPLoS Medicine article, these programs are called "an innovative form of corporate political activity".
Two essays in PLoS Medicine delve into the cultural fundamentalist cesspool; the idea that films with smoking scenes should have "adult" ratings applied to them.
Indeed, as should any film with a woman's skirt above the knees.
Christopher Millett from Imperial College, London, UK and colleagues worry that, despite the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control recommendation that films with smoking scenes have adult content rating, very few governments have complied with this advice.
No one listens to the U.N. anyway.
New technology appears to provide faster, more accurate heart scans for both viewing blood vessels in the heart and measuring blood supply to the heart muscle, while exposing patients to less radiation, researchers report in Circulation: Cardiovascular Imaging, a journal of the American Heart Association.
Electronic medical record text search tool shows promise for identifying postoperative complications
CHICAGO – Use of natural language processing, such as in the form of free-text searches of electronic medical records (EMRs) of clinical and progress notes of patients performed better at identifying postoperative surgical complications than the commonly used administrative data codes in EMRs, according to a study in the August 24/31 issue of JAMA.