US hospitals feel physician burnout

Study sees link between pollution, sperm size

ANN ARBOR, Mich, Nov 22, (Agencies): Dr Brian Halloran, a vascular surgeon at St Joseph Mercy Ann Arbor, starts planning his garden long before spring arrives in southeast Michigan.

His tiny plot, located in the shadow of the 537-bed teaching hospital, helps Halloran cope with burnout from long hours and the stress of surgery on gravely ill patients.

“You really have to find the balance to put it a little more in perspective,” he said.

Hospitals such as St Joseph Mercy Ann Arbor have been investing in programs ranging from yoga classes to personal coaches designed to help doctors become more resilient. But national burnout rates keep rising, with up to 54 percent of doctors affected.

Some leading healthcare executives now say the way medicine is practiced in the United States is to blame, fueled in part by growing clerical demands that have doctors spending two hours on the computer for every one hour they spend seeing patients.

What’s more, burnout is not just bad for doctors; it’s bad for patients and bad for business, according to interviews with more than 20 healthcare executives, doctors and burnout experts.

“This really isn’t just about exercise and getting enough sleep and having a life outside the hospital,” said Dr Tait Shanafelt, a former Mayo Clinic researcher who became Stanford Medicine’s first chief physician wellness officer in September.

“It has at least as much or more to do with the environment in which these folks are practicing,” he said.

Shanafelt and other researchers have shown that burnout erodes job performance, increases medical errors and

tion makes it hard to detect small, faraway objects without help from a normal camera linked to it in real time.

Though Chief Executive Tim Cook has called self-driving cars “the mother of all AI projects,” Apple has given few hints about the nature of its self-driving car ambitious. (RTRS)

Experts find Roman shipwrecks:

leads doctors to leave a profession they once loved.

Hospitals can ill afford these added expenses in an era of tight margins, costly nursing shortages and uncertainty over the fate of the Affordable Care Act, which has put capital projects and payment reform efforts on hold.

“Burnout decreases productivity and increases errors. It’s a big deal,” said Cleveland Clinic Chief Executive Dr. Toby Cosgrove, one of 10 US healthcare CEOs who earlier this year declared physician burnout a public health crisis.

Hospitals are just beginning to recognize the toll of burnout on their operations.

Experts estimate, for example, that it can cost more than a $1 million to recruit and train a replacement for a doctor who leaves because of burnout.

But no broad calculation of burnout costs exists, Shanafelt said. Stanford, Harvard Business School, Mayo and the American Medical Association are working on that. They have put together a comprehensive estimate of the costs of burnout at the organizational and societal level, which has been submitted to a journal for review.

In July, the National Academy of Medicine (NAM) called on researchers to identify interventions that ease burnout. Meanwhile, some hospitals and health insurers are already trying to lighten the load.

Cleveland Clinic last year increased the number of nurse practitioners and other highly trained providers by 25 percent to 1,600 to handle more routine tasks for its 3,600 physicians. It hired eight pharmacists to help with prescription refills.

Atrius Health, Massachusetts’ largest independent physicians group, is diverting unnecessary email traffic away from

Egypt says archaeologists have discovered three sunken shipwrecks dating back more than 2,000 years to Roman times off the coast of the city of Alexandria.

Tuesday’s statement from Mostafa Waziri, the head of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, says the discovery was made in collaboration with the European Institute of Underwater Archaeology.

Waziri says the archeologists also doctors to other staffers and simplifying medical records, aiming to cut 1.5 million mouse “clicks” per year.

Insurer UnitedHealth Group, which operates physician practices for more than 20,000 doctors through its Optum subsidiary, launched a program to help doctors quickly determine whether drugs are covered by a patient’s insurance plan during the patient visit. It is also running a pilot program for Medicare plans in eight states to shrink the number of procedures that require prior authorization.

Similarly, Aetna Inc this year began a behavioral health program that eliminates prior authorization requirements for admission to some high-performing hospitals.

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Men exposed to fine particle air pollution may risk having smaller, abnormally-shaped sperm, said a study Wednesday, warning this “may result in a significant number of couples with infertility.”

An analysis of 2001-2014 data for more than 6,400 Taiwanese men and boys aged 15 to 49, found “a robust association” between a decline in “normal” sperm and exposure to PM 2.5 pollution, it said. PM 2.5 is the term used for air pollution containing the smallest of particles, those measuring 2.5 microns in diameter or less. A micron is a millionth of a metre. The link was observed for short-term exposure of three months, as well as for long-term exposure of two years, according to study results published in the medical journal Occupational & Environmental Medicine, though outside experts questioned the conclusions.

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uncovered a head sculpture carved in crystal and three gold coins dating back to Rome’s first emperor, Augustus. Parts of large wooden planks and archaeological remains of pottery vessels were also found, which could have been part of the ships’ cargo.

The discoveries were made in Alexandria’s Abu Qir Bay. Separately from the Roman-era finds, a votive bark of the pharaonic god Osiris was found in the nearby sunken city of Heraklion. (AP)

Regulators could revoke permit:

South Dakota regulators said on Tuesday they could revoke TransCanada Corp’s permit to operate the Keystone crude oil pipeline in the state if an initial probe into last week’s spill finds the company violated its license.

Last week the Keystone system linking Alberta’s oil sands with US refineries spilled 5,000 barrels in rural northeastern South Dakota, days before neighboring Nebraska approved a proposed a route for the company’s separate Keystone XL expansion project.

The spill in Marshall County was the third along the Keystone route in under 10 years, a concern to state regulators since the pipeline’s lifespan is up to 100 years.

“We are waiting to see what the forensic analysis comes back with to see if any of our conditions were violated,” Kristie Fiegen, chair of the three-person South Dakota Public Utilities Commission, told Reuters, adding a violation could lead to a suspension or cancellation of the permit.

Chris Nelson, another commissioner, agreed. (RTRS)