Professional health literature is replete with examples of how clinicians are adversely affected by burnout, a term applied to a variety of imprecise symptoms associated with the onset of conditions involving stress, fatigue, and depression. A question worth pondering is whether burnout is the equivalent terminologically of old wine in a new bottle? A paper appearing in the September 2019 issue of the periodical The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease rephases the questions as follows: Is today's 21st century burnout an earlier century's neurasthenia? Viewed in this light, the author advances a proposition that "stress" of all kinds (itself a fuzzy concept), including overwork, discouragement, disillusionment, demoralization, and even suicide, have been known as an accompaniment of training and practice for decades. Is something catastrophic happening or are practitioners merely being swept along in a profound, but ill-defined contagious tide of discontent? Is burnout merely this era's zeitgeist, the remnant of "compassion fatigue" of "wounded warriors" of years past, or neurasthenia of the 1900s? In an effort to conclude on a positive note, an observation is made that hysteria, neurasthenia, hypochondriasis, and other conditions all have had their day and cultish followers. With better definition of the problem(s) comes more effective interventions. The author considers the possibility that burnout most likely will experience the same historical reality of earlier variants.
UNCERTAINTY IN RELATION TO EXISTENTIALISM
Indicates the importance of conducting more research on the topic of uncertainty, an incompletely understood phenomenon. Read More
PRESIDENT’S CORNER—ASAHP MEMBER FOCUS
Susan Hanrahan offers her thoughts on the upcoming ASAHP Annual Conference from the standpoint of speakers, a leadership panel, and the Business Meeting, along with updated information about the Association’s Institutional Profile Survey. Read More
AVOIDING A GOVERNMENT SHUTDOWN
Describes legislation involving appropriations for fiscal year 2020 that begins on October 1, 2019 and action underway to reduce pharmaceutical costs. Read More
HEALTH REFORM DEVELOPMENTS
Discusses questions pertaining to enactment of proposed Medicare For All Legislation. Read More
DEVELOPMENTS IN HIGHER EDUCATION
Summarizes finalization of stricter rules for student loan claims and trends in the ratio of the Pell Grant to total price of attendance and federal loan receipt. Read More
QUICK STAT (SHORT, TIMELY, AND TOPICAL)
Mortality Patterns Between States With Highest Death Rates And States With Lowest Death Rates
Comparing Retail Clinics With Other Sites Of Care
The Use Of Small-Scale, Soft Continuum Robots To Navigate In Cerebrovascular Areas
The Use Of “Phyjamas” In Health Care Read More
AVAILABLE RESOURCES ACCESSIBLE ELECTRONICALLY
Hospital Concentration Index
Reducing Inequities In Healthy Life Expectancy
Investing In Interventions That Address Non-Medical, Health-Related Social Needs Read More
BALEFUL IMPACT OF WORKPLACE INCIVILITY ON HEALTH
Mentions how dissimilarity in political identity can relate to reducing the quality of interpersonal interactions and subsequent well-being of workers. Read More
THE ROLE OF ACCIDENTS ON THE PATHWAY TO INJURY AND DEATH
Examines factors pertaining to death and injury of adolescents from motor vehicle accidents and adult mishaps stemming from attempts to remove an avocado pit with a knife. Read More