MDedge Emergency Medicine

You can get all the exercise you need in just 8 minutes a day if you work out a bit harder, according to a new study in the European Heart Journal.

Just 54 minutes of vigorous exercise per week provides the most bang for your buck, researchers found, lowering the risk of early death from any cause by 36%, and your chances of getting heart disease by 35%.

Scientists examined data from fitness trackers worn by more than 71,000 people studied in the United Kingdom, then analyzed their health over the next several years.

While more time spent exercising unsurprisingly led to better health, the protective effects of exercise start to plateau after a certain point, according to the study.

A tough, short workout improves blood pressure, shrinks artery-clogging plaques, and boosts your overall fitness.

Vigorous exercise helps your body adapt better than moderate exercise does, leading to more notable benefits, says study author Matthew Ahmadi, PhD, a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Sydney.

“Collectively, these will lower a person’s risk of cardiovascular disease. Exercise can also lower body inflammation, which will in turn lower the risk for certain cancers,” he says.

The CDC recommends at least 150 minutes of “moderate intensity” exercise each week, such as walking at a brisk pace. Or you could spend 75 minutes each week doing vigorous exercise, like running, it says. The CDC also recommends muscle strengthening activities, like lifting weights, at least 2 days per week.

But only 54% of Americans actually manage to get their 150 minutes of aerobic activity in each week, according to the most recent data from the National Center for Health Statistics. Even fewer – just 24% – also squeeze in the two recommended strength workouts.

So 8 minutes a day instead of 30 minutes could persuade busy people to get the exercise they need.

“Lack of time is one of the main reasons people have reported for not engaging in exercise,” says Dr. Ahmadi.

Vigorous exercise doesn’t mean you have to run, bike, or lift weights. Scientists consider a physical activity “vigorous” if it’s greater than 6 times your resting metabolic rate, or MET. That includes all kinds of strenuous movement, including dancing in a nightclub or carrying groceries upstairs.

“All of these activities are equally beneficial,” says Dr. Ahmadi.

He recommends aiming for 2-minute bouts of a heart-pumping activity, spread throughout the day for the most benefit in the least amount of time. If you wear a smartwatch or other device that tracks your heart rate, you’ll be above the threshold if your heart is pumping at 77% or more of your max heart rate (which most fitness trackers help you calculate).

No smartwatch? “The easiest way a person can infer if they are doing vigorous activity is if they are breathing hard enough that it’s difficult to have a conversation or speak in a full sentence while doing the activity,” Dr. Ahmadi says. In other words, if you’re huffing and puffing, then you’re in the zone.

A version of this article first appeared on WebMD.com.

You can get all the exercise you need in just 8 minutes a day if you work out a bit harder, according to a new study in the European Heart Journal.

Just 54 minutes of vigorous exercise per week provides the most bang for your buck, researchers found, lowering the risk of early death from any cause by 36%, and your chances of getting heart disease by 35%.

Scientists examined data from fitness trackers worn by more than 71,000 people studied in the United Kingdom, then analyzed their health over the next several years.

While more time spent exercising unsurprisingly led to better health, the protective effects of exercise start to plateau after a certain point, according to the study.

A tough, short workout improves blood pressure, shrinks artery-clogging plaques, and boosts your overall fitness.

Vigorous exercise helps your body adapt better than moderate exercise does, leading to more notable benefits, says study author Matthew Ahmadi, PhD, a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Sydney.

“Collectively, these will lower a person’s risk of cardiovascular disease. Exercise can also lower body inflammation, which will in turn lower the risk for certain cancers,” he says.

The CDC recommends at least 150 minutes of “moderate intensity” exercise each week, such as walking at a brisk pace. Or you could spend 75 minutes each week doing vigorous exercise, like running, it says. The CDC also recommends muscle strengthening activities, like lifting weights, at least 2 days per week.

But only 54% of Americans actually manage to get their 150 minutes of aerobic activity in each week, according to the most recent data from the National Center for Health Statistics. Even fewer – just 24% – also squeeze in the two recommended strength workouts.

So 8 minutes a day instead of 30 minutes could persuade busy people to get the exercise they need.

“Lack of time is one of the main reasons people have reported for not engaging in exercise,” says Dr. Ahmadi.

Vigorous exercise doesn’t mean you have to run, bike, or lift weights. Scientists consider a physical activity “vigorous” if it’s greater than 6 times your resting metabolic rate, or MET. That includes all kinds of strenuous movement, including dancing in a nightclub or carrying groceries upstairs.

“All of these activities are equally beneficial,” says Dr. Ahmadi.

He recommends aiming for 2-minute bouts of a heart-pumping activity, spread throughout the day for the most benefit in the least amount of time. If you wear a smartwatch or other device that tracks your heart rate, you’ll be above the threshold if your heart is pumping at 77% or more of your max heart rate (which most fitness trackers help you calculate).

No smartwatch? “The easiest way a person can infer if they are doing vigorous activity is if they are breathing hard enough that it’s difficult to have a conversation or speak in a full sentence while doing the activity,” Dr. Ahmadi says. In other words, if you’re huffing and puffing, then you’re in the zone.

A version of this article first appeared on WebMD.com.

You can get all the exercise you need in just 8 minutes a day if you work out a bit harder, according to a new study in the European Heart Journal.

Just 54 minutes of vigorous exercise per week provides the most bang for your buck, researchers found, lowering the risk of early death from any cause by 36%, and your chances of getting heart disease by 35%.

Scientists examined data from fitness trackers worn by more than 71,000 people studied in the United Kingdom, then analyzed their health over the next several years.

While more time spent exercising unsurprisingly led to better health, the protective effects of exercise start to plateau after a certain point, according to the study.

A tough, short workout improves blood pressure, shrinks artery-clogging plaques, and boosts your overall fitness.

Vigorous exercise helps your body adapt better than moderate exercise does, leading to more notable benefits, says study author Matthew Ahmadi, PhD, a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Sydney.

“Collectively, these will lower a person’s risk of cardiovascular disease. Exercise can also lower body inflammation, which will in turn lower the risk for certain cancers,” he says.

The CDC recommends at least 150 minutes of “moderate intensity” exercise each week, such as walking at a brisk pace. Or you could spend 75 minutes each week doing vigorous exercise, like running, it says. The CDC also recommends muscle strengthening activities, like lifting weights, at least 2 days per week.

But only 54% of Americans actually manage to get their 150 minutes of aerobic activity in each week, according to the most recent data from the National Center for Health Statistics. Even fewer – just 24% – also squeeze in the two recommended strength workouts.

So 8 minutes a day instead of 30 minutes could persuade busy people to get the exercise they need.

“Lack of time is one of the main reasons people have reported for not engaging in exercise,” says Dr. Ahmadi.

Vigorous exercise doesn’t mean you have to run, bike, or lift weights. Scientists consider a physical activity “vigorous” if it’s greater than 6 times your resting metabolic rate, or MET. That includes all kinds of strenuous movement, including dancing in a nightclub or carrying groceries upstairs.

“All of these activities are equally beneficial,” says Dr. Ahmadi.

He recommends aiming for 2-minute bouts of a heart-pumping activity, spread throughout the day for the most benefit in the least amount of time. If you wear a smartwatch or other device that tracks your heart rate, you’ll be above the threshold if your heart is pumping at 77% or more of your max heart rate (which most fitness trackers help you calculate).

No smartwatch? “The easiest way a person can infer if they are doing vigorous activity is if they are breathing hard enough that it’s difficult to have a conversation or speak in a full sentence while doing the activity,” Dr. Ahmadi says. In other words, if you’re huffing and puffing, then you’re in the zone.

A version of this article first appeared on WebMD.com.

For the first time, the majority of people dying from COVID-19 in America have been vaccinated.

“We can no longer say this is a pandemic of the unvaccinated,” Kaiser Family Foundation Vice President Cynthia Cox, who conducted the analysis, told The Washington Post.

People who had been vaccinated or boosted made up 58% of COVID-19 deaths in August, the analysis showed. The rate has been on the rise: 23% of coronavirus deaths were among vaccinated people in September 2021, and the vaccinated made up 42% of deaths in January and February 2022, the Post reported.

Research continues to show that people who are vaccinated or boosted have a lower risk of death. The rise in deaths among the vaccinated is the result of three factors, Ms. Cox said.

• A large majority of people in the United States have been vaccinated (267 million people, the  said).
• People who are at the greatest risk of dying from COVID-19 are more likely to be vaccinated and boosted, such as the elderly.
• Vaccines lose their effectiveness over time; the virus changes to avoid vaccines; and people need to choose to get boosters to continue to be protected.

The case for the effectiveness of vaccines and boosters versus skipping the shots remains strong. People age 6 months and older who are unvaccinated are six times more likely to die of COVID-19, compared to those who got the primary series of shots, the Post reported. Survival rates were even better with additional booster shots, particularly among older people.

“I feel very confident that if people continue to get vaccinated at good numbers, if people get boosted, we can absolutely have a very safe and healthy holiday season,” Ashish Jha, White House coronavirus czar, said on Nov. 22.

The number of Americans who have gotten the most recent booster has been increasing ahead of the holidays. CDC data show that 12% of the U.S. population age 5 and older has received a booster.

A new study by a team of researchers from Harvard University and Yale University estimates that 94% of the U.S. population has been infected with COVID-19 at least once, leaving just 1 in 20 people who have never had the virus.

“Despite these high exposure numbers, there is still substantial population susceptibility to infection with an Omicron variant,” the authors wrote.

They said that if all states achieved the vaccination levels of Vermont, where 55% of people had at least one booster and 22% got a second one, there would be “an appreciable improvement in population immunity, with greater relative impact for protection against infection versus severe disease. This additional protection results from both the recovery of immunity lost due to waning and the increased effectiveness of the bivalent booster against Omicron infections.”

A version of this article first appeared on WebMD.com.

For the first time, the majority of people dying from COVID-19 in America have been vaccinated.

“We can no longer say this is a pandemic of the unvaccinated,” Kaiser Family Foundation Vice President Cynthia Cox, who conducted the analysis, told The Washington Post.

People who had been vaccinated or boosted made up 58% of COVID-19 deaths in August, the analysis showed. The rate has been on the rise: 23% of coronavirus deaths were among vaccinated people in September 2021, and the vaccinated made up 42% of deaths in January and February 2022, the Post reported.

Research continues to show that people who are vaccinated or boosted have a lower risk of death. The rise in deaths among the vaccinated is the result of three factors, Ms. Cox said.

• A large majority of people in the United States have been vaccinated (267 million people, the  said).
• People who are at the greatest risk of dying from COVID-19 are more likely to be vaccinated and boosted, such as the elderly.
• Vaccines lose their effectiveness over time; the virus changes to avoid vaccines; and people need to choose to get boosters to continue to be protected.

The case for the effectiveness of vaccines and boosters versus skipping the shots remains strong. People age 6 months and older who are unvaccinated are six times more likely to die of COVID-19, compared to those who got the primary series of shots, the Post reported. Survival rates were even better with additional booster shots, particularly among older people.

“I feel very confident that if people continue to get vaccinated at good numbers, if people get boosted, we can absolutely have a very safe and healthy holiday season,” Ashish Jha, White House coronavirus czar, said on Nov. 22.

The number of Americans who have gotten the most recent booster has been increasing ahead of the holidays. CDC data show that 12% of the U.S. population age 5 and older has received a booster.

A new study by a team of researchers from Harvard University and Yale University estimates that 94% of the U.S. population has been infected with COVID-19 at least once, leaving just 1 in 20 people who have never had the virus.

“Despite these high exposure numbers, there is still substantial population susceptibility to infection with an Omicron variant,” the authors wrote.

They said that if all states achieved the vaccination levels of Vermont, where 55% of people had at least one booster and 22% got a second one, there would be “an appreciable improvement in population immunity, with greater relative impact for protection against infection versus severe disease. This additional protection results from both the recovery of immunity lost due to waning and the increased effectiveness of the bivalent booster against Omicron infections.”

A version of this article first appeared on WebMD.com.

For the first time, the majority of people dying from COVID-19 in America have been vaccinated.

“We can no longer say this is a pandemic of the unvaccinated,” Kaiser Family Foundation Vice President Cynthia Cox, who conducted the analysis, told The Washington Post.

People who had been vaccinated or boosted made up 58% of COVID-19 deaths in August, the analysis showed. The rate has been on the rise: 23% of coronavirus deaths were among vaccinated people in September 2021, and the vaccinated made up 42% of deaths in January and February 2022, the Post reported.

Research continues to show that people who are vaccinated or boosted have a lower risk of death. The rise in deaths among the vaccinated is the result of three factors, Ms. Cox said.

• A large majority of people in the United States have been vaccinated (267 million people, the  said).
• People who are at the greatest risk of dying from COVID-19 are more likely to be vaccinated and boosted, such as the elderly.
• Vaccines lose their effectiveness over time; the virus changes to avoid vaccines; and people need to choose to get boosters to continue to be protected.

The case for the effectiveness of vaccines and boosters versus skipping the shots remains strong. People age 6 months and older who are unvaccinated are six times more likely to die of COVID-19, compared to those who got the primary series of shots, the Post reported. Survival rates were even better with additional booster shots, particularly among older people.

“I feel very confident that if people continue to get vaccinated at good numbers, if people get boosted, we can absolutely have a very safe and healthy holiday season,” Ashish Jha, White House coronavirus czar, said on Nov. 22.

The number of Americans who have gotten the most recent booster has been increasing ahead of the holidays. CDC data show that 12% of the U.S. population age 5 and older has received a booster.

A new study by a team of researchers from Harvard University and Yale University estimates that 94% of the U.S. population has been infected with COVID-19 at least once, leaving just 1 in 20 people who have never had the virus.

“Despite these high exposure numbers, there is still substantial population susceptibility to infection with an Omicron variant,” the authors wrote.

They said that if all states achieved the vaccination levels of Vermont, where 55% of people had at least one booster and 22% got a second one, there would be “an appreciable improvement in population immunity, with greater relative impact for protection against infection versus severe disease. This additional protection results from both the recovery of immunity lost due to waning and the increased effectiveness of the bivalent booster against Omicron infections.”

A version of this article first appeared on WebMD.com.

When Mark Cucuzzella, MD, meets a new patient at the West Virginia Medical School clinic, he introduces himself as “Mark.” For one thing, says Dr. Cucuzzella, his last name is a mouthful. For another, the 56-year-old general practitioner asserts that getting on a first-name basis with his patients is integral to delivering the best care.

“I’m trying to break down the old paternalistic barriers of the doctor/patient relationship,” he says. “Titles create an environment where the doctors are making all the decisions and not involving the patient in any course of action.”

Aniruddh Setya, MD, has a different take on informality between patients and doctors: It’s not OK. “I am not your friend,” says the 35-year-old pediatrician from Florida-based KIDZ Medical Services. “There has to be a level of respect for the education and accomplishment of being a physician.”

The issue of “untitling” a doctor and failing to use their honorific is becoming increasingly common, according to a recent study published in JAMA Network Open. But that doesn’t mean most physicians support the practice. In fact, some doctors contend that it can be harmful, particularly to female physicians.

“My concern is that untitling (so termed by Amy Diehl, PhD, and Leanne Dzubinski, PhD) intrudes upon important professional boundaries and might be correlated with diminishing the value of someone’s time,” says Leah Witt, MD, a geriatrician at UCSF Health, San Francisco. Dr. Witt, along with colleague Lekshmi Santhosh, MD, a pulmonologist, offered commentary on the study results. “Studies have shown that women physicians get more patient portal messages, spend more time in the electronic health record, and have longer visits,” Dr. Witt said. “Dr. Santhosh and I wonder if untitling is a signifier of this diminished value of our time, and an assumption of increased ease of access leading to this higher workload.”

To compile the results reported in JAMA Network Open, Mayo Clinic researchers analyzed more than 90,000 emails from patients to doctors over the course of 3 years, beginning in 2018. Of those emails, more than 32% included the physician’s first name in greeting or salutation. For women physicians, the odds were twice as high that their titles would be omitted in the correspondence. The same holds true for doctors of osteopathic medicine (DOs) compared with MDs, and primary care physicians had similar odds for a title drop compared with specialists.

Dr. Witt says the findings are not surprising. “They match my experience as a woman in medicine, as Dr. Santhosh and I write in our commentary,” she says. “We think the findings could easily be replicated at other centers.”

Indeed, research on 321 speaker introductions at a medical rounds found that when female physicians introduced other physicians, they usually applied the doctor title. When the job of introducing colleagues fell to male physicians, however, the stats fell to 72.4% for male peers and only 49.2% when introducing female peers.

The Mayo Clinic study authors identified the pitfalls of patients who informally address their doctors. They wrote, “Untitling may have a negative impact on physicians, demonstrate lack of respect, and can lead to reduction in formality of the physician/patient relationship or workplace.”
 

Physician preferences vary

Although the results of the Mayo Clinic analysis didn’t and couldn’t address physician sentiments on patient informality, Dr. Setya observes that American culture is becoming less formal. “I’ve been practicing for over 10 years, and the number of people who consider doctors as equals is growing,” he says. “This has been particularly true over the last couple of years.”

This change was documented in 2015. Add in the pandemic and an entire society that is now accustomed to working from home in sweats, and it’s not a stretch to understand why some patients have become less formal in many settings. The 2015 article noted, however, that most physicians prefer to keep titles in the mix.

Perhaps most troublesome, says Dr. Setya, is that patients forgo asking whether it’s OK to use his first name and simply assume it’s acceptable. “It bothers me,” he says. “I became a doctor for more than the money.”

He suspects that his cultural background (Dr. Setya is of Indian descent) plays a role in how strongly he feels about patient-doctor informality. “As a British colony, Indian culture dictates that you pay respect to elders and to accomplishment,” he points out. “America is far looser when it comes to salutations.”

Dr. Cucuzzella largely agrees with Dr. Setya, but has a different view of the role culture plays in how physicians prefer to be addressed. “If your last name is difficult to pronounce, it can put the patient at ease if you give them an option,” he says. “I like my patients to feel comfortable and have a friendly conversation, so I don’t ask them to try to manage my last name.”

When patients revert to using Dr. Cucuzzella’s last name and title, this often breaks down along generational lines, Dr. Cucuzzella has found: Older patients might drop his title, whereas younger patients might keep it as a sign of respect. In some cases, Dr. Cucuzzella tries to bridge this gap, and offers the option of “Dr. Mark.” In his small West Virginia community, this is how people often refer to him.

Dr. Setya says that most of the older physicians he works with still prefer that patients and younger colleagues use their title, but he has witnessed exceptions to this. “My boss in residence hated to be called ‘Sir’ or ‘Doctor,’ ” he says. “In a situation like that, it is reasonable to ask, ‘How can I address you?’ But it has to be mutually agreed upon.”

Dr. Cucuzzella cites informality as the preferred mode for older patients. “If I have a 70-year-old patient, it seems natural they shouldn’t use my title,” he says. “They are worthy of equality in the community. If I’m talking to a retired CEO or state delegate, it’s uncomfortable if they call me doctor.”

Moreover, Dr. Cucuzzella maintains that establishing a less formal environment with patients leads to better outcomes. “Shared decision-making is a basic human right,” he says. “In 2022, doctors shouldn’t make decisions without patient input, unless it’s an emergency situation. Removing the title barriers makes that easier.”
 

How to handle informality

If you fall more in line with Dr. Setya, there are strategies you can use to try to keep formality in your doctor-patient relationships. Dr. Setya’s approach is indirect. “I don’t correct a patient if they use my first name, because that might seem hostile,” he says. “But I alert them in the way I address them back. A Sir, a Mrs., or a Mr. needs to go both ways.”

This particularly holds true in pediatrics, Dr. Setya has found. He has witnessed many colleagues addressing parents as “Mommy and Daddy,” something he says lacks respect and sets too informal a tone. “It’s almost universal that parents don’t like that, and we need to act accordingly.”

Dr. Witt also avoids directly correcting patients, but struggles when they drop her title. “The standard signature I use to sign every patient portal message I respond to includes my first and last name and credentials,” she says. “I maintain formality in most circumstances with that standard reply.”

Beneath the surface, however, Dr. Witt wishes it were easier. “I have struggled with answering the question, ‘Is it OK if I call you Leah?’ she says. “I want to keep our interaction anchored in professionalism without sacrificing the warmth I think is important to a productive patient-physician relationship. For this reason, I tend to say yes to this request, even though I’d rather patients didn’t make such requests.”

In the Fast Company article by Amy Diehl, PhD, and Leanne Dzubinski, PhD, on the topic of untitling professional women, the authors suggest several actions, beginning with leadership that sets expectations on the topic. They also suggest that physicians use polite corrections if patients untitle them. Supplying positive reinforcement when patients include your title can help, too. If all else fails, you can call out the offensive untitling. More often than not, especially with female physicians, the patient is demonstrating an unconscious bias rather than something deliberate.

Opinions vary on the topic of untitling, and ultimately each physician must make the decision for themselves. But creating informal cultures in an organization can have unintended consequences, especially for female peers.

Says Dr. Witt, “We all want to give our patients the best care we can, but professional boundaries are critical to time management, equitable care, and maintaining work-life balance. I would love to see a study that examines untitling by self-reported race and/or ethnicity of physicians, because we know that women of color experience higher rates of burnout and depression, and I wonder if untitling may be part of this.”

A version of this article first appeared on Medscape.com.

When Mark Cucuzzella, MD, meets a new patient at the West Virginia Medical School clinic, he introduces himself as “Mark.” For one thing, says Dr. Cucuzzella, his last name is a mouthful. For another, the 56-year-old general practitioner asserts that getting on a first-name basis with his patients is integral to delivering the best care.

“I’m trying to break down the old paternalistic barriers of the doctor/patient relationship,” he says. “Titles create an environment where the doctors are making all the decisions and not involving the patient in any course of action.”

Aniruddh Setya, MD, has a different take on informality between patients and doctors: It’s not OK. “I am not your friend,” says the 35-year-old pediatrician from Florida-based KIDZ Medical Services. “There has to be a level of respect for the education and accomplishment of being a physician.”

The issue of “untitling” a doctor and failing to use their honorific is becoming increasingly common, according to a recent study published in JAMA Network Open. But that doesn’t mean most physicians support the practice. In fact, some doctors contend that it can be harmful, particularly to female physicians.

“My concern is that untitling (so termed by Amy Diehl, PhD, and Leanne Dzubinski, PhD) intrudes upon important professional boundaries and might be correlated with diminishing the value of someone’s time,” says Leah Witt, MD, a geriatrician at UCSF Health, San Francisco. Dr. Witt, along with colleague Lekshmi Santhosh, MD, a pulmonologist, offered commentary on the study results. “Studies have shown that women physicians get more patient portal messages, spend more time in the electronic health record, and have longer visits,” Dr. Witt said. “Dr. Santhosh and I wonder if untitling is a signifier of this diminished value of our time, and an assumption of increased ease of access leading to this higher workload.”

To compile the results reported in JAMA Network Open, Mayo Clinic researchers analyzed more than 90,000 emails from patients to doctors over the course of 3 years, beginning in 2018. Of those emails, more than 32% included the physician’s first name in greeting or salutation. For women physicians, the odds were twice as high that their titles would be omitted in the correspondence. The same holds true for doctors of osteopathic medicine (DOs) compared with MDs, and primary care physicians had similar odds for a title drop compared with specialists.

Dr. Witt says the findings are not surprising. “They match my experience as a woman in medicine, as Dr. Santhosh and I write in our commentary,” she says. “We think the findings could easily be replicated at other centers.”

Indeed, research on 321 speaker introductions at a medical rounds found that when female physicians introduced other physicians, they usually applied the doctor title. When the job of introducing colleagues fell to male physicians, however, the stats fell to 72.4% for male peers and only 49.2% when introducing female peers.

The Mayo Clinic study authors identified the pitfalls of patients who informally address their doctors. They wrote, “Untitling may have a negative impact on physicians, demonstrate lack of respect, and can lead to reduction in formality of the physician/patient relationship or workplace.”
 

Physician preferences vary

Although the results of the Mayo Clinic analysis didn’t and couldn’t address physician sentiments on patient informality, Dr. Setya observes that American culture is becoming less formal. “I’ve been practicing for over 10 years, and the number of people who consider doctors as equals is growing,” he says. “This has been particularly true over the last couple of years.”

This change was documented in 2015. Add in the pandemic and an entire society that is now accustomed to working from home in sweats, and it’s not a stretch to understand why some patients have become less formal in many settings. The 2015 article noted, however, that most physicians prefer to keep titles in the mix.

Perhaps most troublesome, says Dr. Setya, is that patients forgo asking whether it’s OK to use his first name and simply assume it’s acceptable. “It bothers me,” he says. “I became a doctor for more than the money.”

He suspects that his cultural background (Dr. Setya is of Indian descent) plays a role in how strongly he feels about patient-doctor informality. “As a British colony, Indian culture dictates that you pay respect to elders and to accomplishment,” he points out. “America is far looser when it comes to salutations.”

Dr. Cucuzzella largely agrees with Dr. Setya, but has a different view of the role culture plays in how physicians prefer to be addressed. “If your last name is difficult to pronounce, it can put the patient at ease if you give them an option,” he says. “I like my patients to feel comfortable and have a friendly conversation, so I don’t ask them to try to manage my last name.”

When patients revert to using Dr. Cucuzzella’s last name and title, this often breaks down along generational lines, Dr. Cucuzzella has found: Older patients might drop his title, whereas younger patients might keep it as a sign of respect. In some cases, Dr. Cucuzzella tries to bridge this gap, and offers the option of “Dr. Mark.” In his small West Virginia community, this is how people often refer to him.

Dr. Setya says that most of the older physicians he works with still prefer that patients and younger colleagues use their title, but he has witnessed exceptions to this. “My boss in residence hated to be called ‘Sir’ or ‘Doctor,’ ” he says. “In a situation like that, it is reasonable to ask, ‘How can I address you?’ But it has to be mutually agreed upon.”

Dr. Cucuzzella cites informality as the preferred mode for older patients. “If I have a 70-year-old patient, it seems natural they shouldn’t use my title,” he says. “They are worthy of equality in the community. If I’m talking to a retired CEO or state delegate, it’s uncomfortable if they call me doctor.”

Moreover, Dr. Cucuzzella maintains that establishing a less formal environment with patients leads to better outcomes. “Shared decision-making is a basic human right,” he says. “In 2022, doctors shouldn’t make decisions without patient input, unless it’s an emergency situation. Removing the title barriers makes that easier.”
 

How to handle informality

If you fall more in line with Dr. Setya, there are strategies you can use to try to keep formality in your doctor-patient relationships. Dr. Setya’s approach is indirect. “I don’t correct a patient if they use my first name, because that might seem hostile,” he says. “But I alert them in the way I address them back. A Sir, a Mrs., or a Mr. needs to go both ways.”

This particularly holds true in pediatrics, Dr. Setya has found. He has witnessed many colleagues addressing parents as “Mommy and Daddy,” something he says lacks respect and sets too informal a tone. “It’s almost universal that parents don’t like that, and we need to act accordingly.”

Dr. Witt also avoids directly correcting patients, but struggles when they drop her title. “The standard signature I use to sign every patient portal message I respond to includes my first and last name and credentials,” she says. “I maintain formality in most circumstances with that standard reply.”

Beneath the surface, however, Dr. Witt wishes it were easier. “I have struggled with answering the question, ‘Is it OK if I call you Leah?’ she says. “I want to keep our interaction anchored in professionalism without sacrificing the warmth I think is important to a productive patient-physician relationship. For this reason, I tend to say yes to this request, even though I’d rather patients didn’t make such requests.”

In the Fast Company article by Amy Diehl, PhD, and Leanne Dzubinski, PhD, on the topic of untitling professional women, the authors suggest several actions, beginning with leadership that sets expectations on the topic. They also suggest that physicians use polite corrections if patients untitle them. Supplying positive reinforcement when patients include your title can help, too. If all else fails, you can call out the offensive untitling. More often than not, especially with female physicians, the patient is demonstrating an unconscious bias rather than something deliberate.

Opinions vary on the topic of untitling, and ultimately each physician must make the decision for themselves. But creating informal cultures in an organization can have unintended consequences, especially for female peers.

Says Dr. Witt, “We all want to give our patients the best care we can, but professional boundaries are critical to time management, equitable care, and maintaining work-life balance. I would love to see a study that examines untitling by self-reported race and/or ethnicity of physicians, because we know that women of color experience higher rates of burnout and depression, and I wonder if untitling may be part of this.”

A version of this article first appeared on Medscape.com.

When Mark Cucuzzella, MD, meets a new patient at the West Virginia Medical School clinic, he introduces himself as “Mark.” For one thing, says Dr. Cucuzzella, his last name is a mouthful. For another, the 56-year-old general practitioner asserts that getting on a first-name basis with his patients is integral to delivering the best care.

“I’m trying to break down the old paternalistic barriers of the doctor/patient relationship,” he says. “Titles create an environment where the doctors are making all the decisions and not involving the patient in any course of action.”

Aniruddh Setya, MD, has a different take on informality between patients and doctors: It’s not OK. “I am not your friend,” says the 35-year-old pediatrician from Florida-based KIDZ Medical Services. “There has to be a level of respect for the education and accomplishment of being a physician.”

The issue of “untitling” a doctor and failing to use their honorific is becoming increasingly common, according to a recent study published in JAMA Network Open. But that doesn’t mean most physicians support the practice. In fact, some doctors contend that it can be harmful, particularly to female physicians.

“My concern is that untitling (so termed by Amy Diehl, PhD, and Leanne Dzubinski, PhD) intrudes upon important professional boundaries and might be correlated with diminishing the value of someone’s time,” says Leah Witt, MD, a geriatrician at UCSF Health, San Francisco. Dr. Witt, along with colleague Lekshmi Santhosh, MD, a pulmonologist, offered commentary on the study results. “Studies have shown that women physicians get more patient portal messages, spend more time in the electronic health record, and have longer visits,” Dr. Witt said. “Dr. Santhosh and I wonder if untitling is a signifier of this diminished value of our time, and an assumption of increased ease of access leading to this higher workload.”

To compile the results reported in JAMA Network Open, Mayo Clinic researchers analyzed more than 90,000 emails from patients to doctors over the course of 3 years, beginning in 2018. Of those emails, more than 32% included the physician’s first name in greeting or salutation. For women physicians, the odds were twice as high that their titles would be omitted in the correspondence. The same holds true for doctors of osteopathic medicine (DOs) compared with MDs, and primary care physicians had similar odds for a title drop compared with specialists.

Dr. Witt says the findings are not surprising. “They match my experience as a woman in medicine, as Dr. Santhosh and I write in our commentary,” she says. “We think the findings could easily be replicated at other centers.”

Indeed, research on 321 speaker introductions at a medical rounds found that when female physicians introduced other physicians, they usually applied the doctor title. When the job of introducing colleagues fell to male physicians, however, the stats fell to 72.4% for male peers and only 49.2% when introducing female peers.

The Mayo Clinic study authors identified the pitfalls of patients who informally address their doctors. They wrote, “Untitling may have a negative impact on physicians, demonstrate lack of respect, and can lead to reduction in formality of the physician/patient relationship or workplace.”
 

Physician preferences vary

Although the results of the Mayo Clinic analysis didn’t and couldn’t address physician sentiments on patient informality, Dr. Setya observes that American culture is becoming less formal. “I’ve been practicing for over 10 years, and the number of people who consider doctors as equals is growing,” he says. “This has been particularly true over the last couple of years.”

This change was documented in 2015. Add in the pandemic and an entire society that is now accustomed to working from home in sweats, and it’s not a stretch to understand why some patients have become less formal in many settings. The 2015 article noted, however, that most physicians prefer to keep titles in the mix.

Perhaps most troublesome, says Dr. Setya, is that patients forgo asking whether it’s OK to use his first name and simply assume it’s acceptable. “It bothers me,” he says. “I became a doctor for more than the money.”

He suspects that his cultural background (Dr. Setya is of Indian descent) plays a role in how strongly he feels about patient-doctor informality. “As a British colony, Indian culture dictates that you pay respect to elders and to accomplishment,” he points out. “America is far looser when it comes to salutations.”

Dr. Cucuzzella largely agrees with Dr. Setya, but has a different view of the role culture plays in how physicians prefer to be addressed. “If your last name is difficult to pronounce, it can put the patient at ease if you give them an option,” he says. “I like my patients to feel comfortable and have a friendly conversation, so I don’t ask them to try to manage my last name.”

When patients revert to using Dr. Cucuzzella’s last name and title, this often breaks down along generational lines, Dr. Cucuzzella has found: Older patients might drop his title, whereas younger patients might keep it as a sign of respect. In some cases, Dr. Cucuzzella tries to bridge this gap, and offers the option of “Dr. Mark.” In his small West Virginia community, this is how people often refer to him.

Dr. Setya says that most of the older physicians he works with still prefer that patients and younger colleagues use their title, but he has witnessed exceptions to this. “My boss in residence hated to be called ‘Sir’ or ‘Doctor,’ ” he says. “In a situation like that, it is reasonable to ask, ‘How can I address you?’ But it has to be mutually agreed upon.”

Dr. Cucuzzella cites informality as the preferred mode for older patients. “If I have a 70-year-old patient, it seems natural they shouldn’t use my title,” he says. “They are worthy of equality in the community. If I’m talking to a retired CEO or state delegate, it’s uncomfortable if they call me doctor.”

Moreover, Dr. Cucuzzella maintains that establishing a less formal environment with patients leads to better outcomes. “Shared decision-making is a basic human right,” he says. “In 2022, doctors shouldn’t make decisions without patient input, unless it’s an emergency situation. Removing the title barriers makes that easier.”
 

How to handle informality

If you fall more in line with Dr. Setya, there are strategies you can use to try to keep formality in your doctor-patient relationships. Dr. Setya’s approach is indirect. “I don’t correct a patient if they use my first name, because that might seem hostile,” he says. “But I alert them in the way I address them back. A Sir, a Mrs., or a Mr. needs to go both ways.”

This particularly holds true in pediatrics, Dr. Setya has found. He has witnessed many colleagues addressing parents as “Mommy and Daddy,” something he says lacks respect and sets too informal a tone. “It’s almost universal that parents don’t like that, and we need to act accordingly.”

Dr. Witt also avoids directly correcting patients, but struggles when they drop her title. “The standard signature I use to sign every patient portal message I respond to includes my first and last name and credentials,” she says. “I maintain formality in most circumstances with that standard reply.”

Beneath the surface, however, Dr. Witt wishes it were easier. “I have struggled with answering the question, ‘Is it OK if I call you Leah?’ she says. “I want to keep our interaction anchored in professionalism without sacrificing the warmth I think is important to a productive patient-physician relationship. For this reason, I tend to say yes to this request, even though I’d rather patients didn’t make such requests.”

In the Fast Company article by Amy Diehl, PhD, and Leanne Dzubinski, PhD, on the topic of untitling professional women, the authors suggest several actions, beginning with leadership that sets expectations on the topic. They also suggest that physicians use polite corrections if patients untitle them. Supplying positive reinforcement when patients include your title can help, too. If all else fails, you can call out the offensive untitling. More often than not, especially with female physicians, the patient is demonstrating an unconscious bias rather than something deliberate.

Opinions vary on the topic of untitling, and ultimately each physician must make the decision for themselves. But creating informal cultures in an organization can have unintended consequences, especially for female peers.

Says Dr. Witt, “We all want to give our patients the best care we can, but professional boundaries are critical to time management, equitable care, and maintaining work-life balance. I would love to see a study that examines untitling by self-reported race and/or ethnicity of physicians, because we know that women of color experience higher rates of burnout and depression, and I wonder if untitling may be part of this.”

A version of this article first appeared on Medscape.com.

NASHVILLE, TENN. – Supported by several cases series, a large cohort analysis has associated exposure to probiotics in the intensive care unit with a measurable increase in bacteremia and bacteremia-related mortality due to organisms in these preparations, according to new findings presented at the annual meeting of the American College of Chest Physicians (CHEST).

According to data presented by Scott Mayer, MD, chief resident at HealthONE Denver, which is part of the HCA Healthcare chain of hospitals, the risk is increased by any probiotic exposure. However, the risk is particularly acute for powdered formulations, presumably because powder more easily disseminates to contaminate central venous catheters.

“We think that probiotics should be eliminated entirely from the ICU. If not, we encourage eliminating the powder formulations,” said Dr. Mayer, who led the study.

The data linking probiotics to ICU bacteremia were drawn from 23,533 ICU admissions over a 5-year period in the HCA hospital database. Bacteremia proven to be probiotic-related was uncommon (0.37%), but the consequences were serious.

For those with probiotic-related bacteremia, the mortality rate was 25.6% or essentially twofold greater than the 13.5% mortality rate among those without probiotic bacteremia. An odds ratio drawn from a regression analysis confirmed a significant difference (OR, 2.23; 95% confidence interval, 1.30-3.71; P < .01).

“The absolute risk of mortality is modest but not insignificant,” said Dr. Mayer. This suggests one probiotic-related mortality for about every 200 patients taking a probiotic in the ICU.

These deaths occur without any clear compensatory benefit from taking probiotics, according to Dr. Mayer. There is a long list of potential benefits from probiotics that might be relevant to patients in the ICU, particularly prophylaxis for Clostridioides difficile infection, but also including a variety of gastrointestinal disorders, such as irritable bowel syndrome; however, none of these are firmly established in general, and particularly for patients in the ICU.

“The American College of Gastroenterology currently recommends against probiotics for the prevention of C. diff.,” Dr. Mayer said. Although the American Gastroenterological Association has issued a “conditional recommendation” for prevention of C. diff. infection with probiotics, Dr. Mayer pointed out this is qualified by a “low quality of evidence” and it is not specific to the ICU setting.

“The evidence for benefit is weak or nonexistent, but the risks are real,” Dr. Mayer said.

To confirm that probiotic-associated ICU bacteremias in the HCA hospital database were, in fact, related to probiotics being taken by patients at time of admission, Dr. Mayer evaluated the record of each of the 86 patients with probiotic bacteremia–associated mortality.

“I identified the organism that grew from the blood cultures to confirm that it was contained in the probiotic the patient was taking,” explained Dr. Mayer, who said this information was available in the electronic medical records.

The risk of probiotic-associated bacteremia in ICU patients was consistent with a series of case series that prompted the study. Dr. Mayer explained that he became interested when he encountered patients on his ICU rounds who were taking probiotics. He knew very little about these agents and explored the medical literature to see what evidence was available.

“I found several case reports of ICU patients with probiotic-associated infections, several of which were suspected of being associated with contamination of the central lines,” Dr. Mayer said. In one case, the patient was not taking a probiotic, but a patient in an adjacent bed was receiving a powdered probiotic that was implicated. This prompted suspicion that the cause was central-line contamination.

This was evaluated in the HCA ICU database and also found to be a significant risk. Among the 67 patients in whom a capsule or tablet was used, the rate of probiotic-associated bacteremia was 0.33%. For those in which the probiotic was a powdered formulation, the rate was 0.76%, a significant difference (P < .01).

Dr. Mayer acknowledged that these data do not rule out all potential benefits from probiotics in the ICU. He believes an obstacle to proving benefit has been the heterogeneity of available products, which are likely to be relevant to any therapeutic role, including prevention of C. diff. infection.

“There are now a large number of products available, and they contain a large variety of strains of organisms, so this has been a difficult area to study,” he said. However, he maintains it is prudent at this point to avoid probiotics in the ICU because the risks are not confined to the patient making this choice.

“My concern is not just the lack of evidence of benefit relative to the risk for the patient but the potential for probiotics in the ICU to place other patients at risk,” Dr. Mayer said.

Others have also noted the potential benefits of probiotics in the ICU, but the promise remains elusive. In a 2018 review article published in the Journal of Emergency and Critical Care Medicine, the authors evaluated a series of potential applications of probiotics in critically ill patients. These included treatment of ventilator-associated pneumonia (VAP), catheter-associated urinary tract infections (CAUTI), and surgical-site infections (SSI). For each, the data were negative or inconclusive.

Over the 4 years that have passed since the review was published, several trials have further explored the potential benefits of probiotics in the ICU but none have changed this basic conclusion. For example, a 2021 multinational trial, published in The Lancet, randomized more than 2,600 patients to probiotics or placebo and showed no effect on VAP incidence (21.9% vs. 21.3%).

The lead author of the 2018 review, Heather A. Vitko, PhD, an associate professor in the department of acute and tertiary care, University of Pittsburgh School of Nursing, also emphasized that the potential for benefit cannot be considered without the potential for risk. She, like Dr. Mayer, cited the case studies implicating probiotics in systemic infections.

For administration, probiotic capsules or sachets “often need to be opened for administration through a feeding tube,” she noted. The risk of contamination comes from both the air and contaminated hands, the latter of which “can cause a translocation to a central line catheter where the microbes have direct entry into the systemic circulation.”

She did not call for a ban of probiotics in the ICU, but she did recommend “a precautionary approach,” encouraging clinicians to “distinguish between reality [of what has been proven] and what is presented in the marketing of antibiotics.”

Dr. Mayer and Dr. Vitko have reported no relevant financial relationships.

A version of this article first appeared on Medscape.com.

NASHVILLE, TENN. – Supported by several cases series, a large cohort analysis has associated exposure to probiotics in the intensive care unit with a measurable increase in bacteremia and bacteremia-related mortality due to organisms in these preparations, according to new findings presented at the annual meeting of the American College of Chest Physicians (CHEST).

According to data presented by Scott Mayer, MD, chief resident at HealthONE Denver, which is part of the HCA Healthcare chain of hospitals, the risk is increased by any probiotic exposure. However, the risk is particularly acute for powdered formulations, presumably because powder more easily disseminates to contaminate central venous catheters.

“We think that probiotics should be eliminated entirely from the ICU. If not, we encourage eliminating the powder formulations,” said Dr. Mayer, who led the study.

The data linking probiotics to ICU bacteremia were drawn from 23,533 ICU admissions over a 5-year period in the HCA hospital database. Bacteremia proven to be probiotic-related was uncommon (0.37%), but the consequences were serious.

For those with probiotic-related bacteremia, the mortality rate was 25.6% or essentially twofold greater than the 13.5% mortality rate among those without probiotic bacteremia. An odds ratio drawn from a regression analysis confirmed a significant difference (OR, 2.23; 95% confidence interval, 1.30-3.71; P < .01).

“The absolute risk of mortality is modest but not insignificant,” said Dr. Mayer. This suggests one probiotic-related mortality for about every 200 patients taking a probiotic in the ICU.

These deaths occur without any clear compensatory benefit from taking probiotics, according to Dr. Mayer. There is a long list of potential benefits from probiotics that might be relevant to patients in the ICU, particularly prophylaxis for Clostridioides difficile infection, but also including a variety of gastrointestinal disorders, such as irritable bowel syndrome; however, none of these are firmly established in general, and particularly for patients in the ICU.

“The American College of Gastroenterology currently recommends against probiotics for the prevention of C. diff.,” Dr. Mayer said. Although the American Gastroenterological Association has issued a “conditional recommendation” for prevention of C. diff. infection with probiotics, Dr. Mayer pointed out this is qualified by a “low quality of evidence” and it is not specific to the ICU setting.

“The evidence for benefit is weak or nonexistent, but the risks are real,” Dr. Mayer said.

To confirm that probiotic-associated ICU bacteremias in the HCA hospital database were, in fact, related to probiotics being taken by patients at time of admission, Dr. Mayer evaluated the record of each of the 86 patients with probiotic bacteremia–associated mortality.

“I identified the organism that grew from the blood cultures to confirm that it was contained in the probiotic the patient was taking,” explained Dr. Mayer, who said this information was available in the electronic medical records.

The risk of probiotic-associated bacteremia in ICU patients was consistent with a series of case series that prompted the study. Dr. Mayer explained that he became interested when he encountered patients on his ICU rounds who were taking probiotics. He knew very little about these agents and explored the medical literature to see what evidence was available.

“I found several case reports of ICU patients with probiotic-associated infections, several of which were suspected of being associated with contamination of the central lines,” Dr. Mayer said. In one case, the patient was not taking a probiotic, but a patient in an adjacent bed was receiving a powdered probiotic that was implicated. This prompted suspicion that the cause was central-line contamination.

This was evaluated in the HCA ICU database and also found to be a significant risk. Among the 67 patients in whom a capsule or tablet was used, the rate of probiotic-associated bacteremia was 0.33%. For those in which the probiotic was a powdered formulation, the rate was 0.76%, a significant difference (P < .01).

Dr. Mayer acknowledged that these data do not rule out all potential benefits from probiotics in the ICU. He believes an obstacle to proving benefit has been the heterogeneity of available products, which are likely to be relevant to any therapeutic role, including prevention of C. diff. infection.

“There are now a large number of products available, and they contain a large variety of strains of organisms, so this has been a difficult area to study,” he said. However, he maintains it is prudent at this point to avoid probiotics in the ICU because the risks are not confined to the patient making this choice.

“My concern is not just the lack of evidence of benefit relative to the risk for the patient but the potential for probiotics in the ICU to place other patients at risk,” Dr. Mayer said.

Others have also noted the potential benefits of probiotics in the ICU, but the promise remains elusive. In a 2018 review article published in the Journal of Emergency and Critical Care Medicine, the authors evaluated a series of potential applications of probiotics in critically ill patients. These included treatment of ventilator-associated pneumonia (VAP), catheter-associated urinary tract infections (CAUTI), and surgical-site infections (SSI). For each, the data were negative or inconclusive.

Over the 4 years that have passed since the review was published, several trials have further explored the potential benefits of probiotics in the ICU but none have changed this basic conclusion. For example, a 2021 multinational trial, published in The Lancet, randomized more than 2,600 patients to probiotics or placebo and showed no effect on VAP incidence (21.9% vs. 21.3%).

The lead author of the 2018 review, Heather A. Vitko, PhD, an associate professor in the department of acute and tertiary care, University of Pittsburgh School of Nursing, also emphasized that the potential for benefit cannot be considered without the potential for risk. She, like Dr. Mayer, cited the case studies implicating probiotics in systemic infections.

For administration, probiotic capsules or sachets “often need to be opened for administration through a feeding tube,” she noted. The risk of contamination comes from both the air and contaminated hands, the latter of which “can cause a translocation to a central line catheter where the microbes have direct entry into the systemic circulation.”

She did not call for a ban of probiotics in the ICU, but she did recommend “a precautionary approach,” encouraging clinicians to “distinguish between reality [of what has been proven] and what is presented in the marketing of antibiotics.”

Dr. Mayer and Dr. Vitko have reported no relevant financial relationships.

A version of this article first appeared on Medscape.com.

NASHVILLE, TENN. – Supported by several cases series, a large cohort analysis has associated exposure to probiotics in the intensive care unit with a measurable increase in bacteremia and bacteremia-related mortality due to organisms in these preparations, according to new findings presented at the annual meeting of the American College of Chest Physicians (CHEST).

According to data presented by Scott Mayer, MD, chief resident at HealthONE Denver, which is part of the HCA Healthcare chain of hospitals, the risk is increased by any probiotic exposure. However, the risk is particularly acute for powdered formulations, presumably because powder more easily disseminates to contaminate central venous catheters.

“We think that probiotics should be eliminated entirely from the ICU. If not, we encourage eliminating the powder formulations,” said Dr. Mayer, who led the study.

The data linking probiotics to ICU bacteremia were drawn from 23,533 ICU admissions over a 5-year period in the HCA hospital database. Bacteremia proven to be probiotic-related was uncommon (0.37%), but the consequences were serious.

For those with probiotic-related bacteremia, the mortality rate was 25.6% or essentially twofold greater than the 13.5% mortality rate among those without probiotic bacteremia. An odds ratio drawn from a regression analysis confirmed a significant difference (OR, 2.23; 95% confidence interval, 1.30-3.71; P < .01).

“The absolute risk of mortality is modest but not insignificant,” said Dr. Mayer. This suggests one probiotic-related mortality for about every 200 patients taking a probiotic in the ICU.

These deaths occur without any clear compensatory benefit from taking probiotics, according to Dr. Mayer. There is a long list of potential benefits from probiotics that might be relevant to patients in the ICU, particularly prophylaxis for Clostridioides difficile infection, but also including a variety of gastrointestinal disorders, such as irritable bowel syndrome; however, none of these are firmly established in general, and particularly for patients in the ICU.

“The American College of Gastroenterology currently recommends against probiotics for the prevention of C. diff.,” Dr. Mayer said. Although the American Gastroenterological Association has issued a “conditional recommendation” for prevention of C. diff. infection with probiotics, Dr. Mayer pointed out this is qualified by a “low quality of evidence” and it is not specific to the ICU setting.

“The evidence for benefit is weak or nonexistent, but the risks are real,” Dr. Mayer said.

To confirm that probiotic-associated ICU bacteremias in the HCA hospital database were, in fact, related to probiotics being taken by patients at time of admission, Dr. Mayer evaluated the record of each of the 86 patients with probiotic bacteremia–associated mortality.

“I identified the organism that grew from the blood cultures to confirm that it was contained in the probiotic the patient was taking,” explained Dr. Mayer, who said this information was available in the electronic medical records.

The risk of probiotic-associated bacteremia in ICU patients was consistent with a series of case series that prompted the study. Dr. Mayer explained that he became interested when he encountered patients on his ICU rounds who were taking probiotics. He knew very little about these agents and explored the medical literature to see what evidence was available.

“I found several case reports of ICU patients with probiotic-associated infections, several of which were suspected of being associated with contamination of the central lines,” Dr. Mayer said. In one case, the patient was not taking a probiotic, but a patient in an adjacent bed was receiving a powdered probiotic that was implicated. This prompted suspicion that the cause was central-line contamination.

This was evaluated in the HCA ICU database and also found to be a significant risk. Among the 67 patients in whom a capsule or tablet was used, the rate of probiotic-associated bacteremia was 0.33%. For those in which the probiotic was a powdered formulation, the rate was 0.76%, a significant difference (P < .01).

Dr. Mayer acknowledged that these data do not rule out all potential benefits from probiotics in the ICU. He believes an obstacle to proving benefit has been the heterogeneity of available products, which are likely to be relevant to any therapeutic role, including prevention of C. diff. infection.

“There are now a large number of products available, and they contain a large variety of strains of organisms, so this has been a difficult area to study,” he said. However, he maintains it is prudent at this point to avoid probiotics in the ICU because the risks are not confined to the patient making this choice.

“My concern is not just the lack of evidence of benefit relative to the risk for the patient but the potential for probiotics in the ICU to place other patients at risk,” Dr. Mayer said.

Others have also noted the potential benefits of probiotics in the ICU, but the promise remains elusive. In a 2018 review article published in the Journal of Emergency and Critical Care Medicine, the authors evaluated a series of potential applications of probiotics in critically ill patients. These included treatment of ventilator-associated pneumonia (VAP), catheter-associated urinary tract infections (CAUTI), and surgical-site infections (SSI). For each, the data were negative or inconclusive.

Over the 4 years that have passed since the review was published, several trials have further explored the potential benefits of probiotics in the ICU but none have changed this basic conclusion. For example, a 2021 multinational trial, published in The Lancet, randomized more than 2,600 patients to probiotics or placebo and showed no effect on VAP incidence (21.9% vs. 21.3%).

The lead author of the 2018 review, Heather A. Vitko, PhD, an associate professor in the department of acute and tertiary care, University of Pittsburgh School of Nursing, also emphasized that the potential for benefit cannot be considered without the potential for risk. She, like Dr. Mayer, cited the case studies implicating probiotics in systemic infections.

For administration, probiotic capsules or sachets “often need to be opened for administration through a feeding tube,” she noted. The risk of contamination comes from both the air and contaminated hands, the latter of which “can cause a translocation to a central line catheter where the microbes have direct entry into the systemic circulation.”

She did not call for a ban of probiotics in the ICU, but she did recommend “a precautionary approach,” encouraging clinicians to “distinguish between reality [of what has been proven] and what is presented in the marketing of antibiotics.”

Dr. Mayer and Dr. Vitko have reported no relevant financial relationships.

A version of this article first appeared on Medscape.com.

Diagnosing long COVID is something of an art for doctors who, without any formal criteria, say they know it when they see it. Treating the condition requires equal combinations of skill, experience, and intuition, and doctors waiting for guidelines have started cobbling together treatment plans designed to ease the worst symptoms.

Their work is urgent. In the United States alone, as many as 29 million people have long COVID, according to estimates from the American Academy of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation.

“Patients with long COVID have on average at least 14 different symptoms involving nine or more different organ systems, so a holistic approach to treatment is essential,” said Janna Friedly, MD, executive director of the Post-COVID Rehabilitation and Recovery Clinic at the University of Washington in Seattle. 

For acute COVID cases, the National Institutes of Health has treatment guidelines that are taking a lot of the guesswork out of managing patients’ complex mix of symptoms. This has made it easier for primary care providers to manage people with milder cases and for specialists to come up with effective treatment plans for those with severe illness. But no such guidelines exist for long COVID, and this is making it harder for many doctors – particularly in primary care – to determine the best treatment. 

While there isn’t a single treatment that is effective for all long-COVID symptoms – and nothing is approved by the Food and Drug Administration specifically for this syndrome – doctors do have tools, Dr. Friedly said. 

“We always start with the basics – making sure we help patients get enough restorative sleep, optimizing their nutrition, ensuring proper hydration, reducing stress, breathing exercises, and restorative exercise – because all of these are critically important to helping people’s immune system stay as healthy as possible,” she said. “In addition, we help people manage the anxiety and depression that may be exacerbating their symptoms.”

Fatigue is an obvious target. Widely available screening tools, including assessments that have been used in cancer patients and people with chronic fatigue syndrome, can pinpoint how bad symptoms are in long-COVID patients. 

“Fatigue is generally the No. 1 symptom,” said Monica Verduzco-Gutierrez, MD, chair of rehabilitation medicine and director of the COVID-19 Recovery Clinic at the University of Texas Health Science Center in San Antonio. “If a patient has this, then their therapy program has to look very different, because they actually do better with pacing themselves.”

This was the first symptom tackled in a series of long-COVID treatment guidelines issued by the medical society representing many of the providers on the front lines with these patients every day – the American Academy of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation. These fatigue guidelines stress the importance of rest, energy conservation, and proper hydration. 

For patients with only mild fatigue who can still keep up with essential activities like work and school, activity programs may begin with a gradual return to daily routines such as housework or going out with friends. As long as they have no setbacks, patients can also start with light aerobic exercise and make it more intense and frequent over time. As long as they have no setbacks in symptoms, they can ramp up exercise by about 10% every 10 days. 

But with severe fatigue, this is too much, too soon. Activity plans are more apt to start with only light stretching and progress to light muscle strengthening before any aerobic exercise enters the picture. 

“Traditional exercise programs may be harmful to some patients with long COVID,” said Dr. Verduzco-Gutierrez. “Many cannot tolerate graded exercise [where exertion slowly ramps up], and it actually can make them worse.” 

There’s less consensus on other options for treating fatigue, like prescription medications, dietary supplements, and acupuncture. Some doctors have tried prescription drugs like the antiviral and movement disorder medication amantadine, the narcolepsy drug modafinil, and the stimulant methylphenidate, which have been studied for managing fatigue in patients with other conditions like cancer, multiple sclerosis, traumatic brain injuries, and Parkinson’s disease. But there isn’t yet clear evidence from clinical trials about how well these options work for long COVID. 

Similarly, interventions to tackle neurological symptoms and cognitive problems borrow a page from treatments used for other conditions like stroke and dementia – but require changes to meet the needs of those with long COVID. Four in five long-COVID patients with neurological and cognitive issues have brain fog, while more than two-thirds have headaches, and more than half have numbness and tingling in their extremities, loss of taste, loss of smell, and muscle pain, one study suggests.

Patients with deficits in areas like memory, attention, executive function, and visual and spatial planning may get speech therapy or occupational therapy, for example – both approaches that are common in people with cognitive decline caused by other medical conditions. 

Doctors also promote good sleep practices and treating any mood disorders – both of which can contribute to cognitive problems. But they often have to skip one of the best interventions for improving brain function – exercise – because so many long-COVID patients struggle with fatigue and exertion or have cardiovascular issues that limit their exercise. 

The lack of formal guidelines is especially a problem because there aren’t nearly enough specialists to manage the surge of patients who need treatment for issues like fatigue and brain fog. And without guidelines, primary care providers lack a reliable road map to guide referrals that many patients may need. 

“Given the complexity of long COVID and the wide range of symptoms and medical issues associated with long COVID, most physicians, regardless of specialty, will need to evaluate and treat long-COVID symptoms,” said Dr. Friedly. “And yet, most do not have the knowledge or experience to effectively manage long-COVID symptoms, so having guidelines that can be updated as more research is conducted is critical.”

One barrier to developing guidelines for long COVID is the lack of research into the biological causes of fatigue and autonomic dysfunction – nervous system damage that can impact critical things like blood pressure, digestion, and body temperature – that affect so many long-COVID patients, said Alba Miranda Azola, MD, codirector of the Post-Acute COVID-19 Team at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. 

Research is also progressing much more slowly for long COVID than it did for those hospitalized with severe acute infections. The logistics of running rigorous studies to prove which treatments work best for specific symptoms – information needed to create definitive treatment guidelines – are much more complicated for people with long COVID who live at home and may be too exhausted or too preoccupied with their daily lives to take part in research. 

The vast number of symptoms, surfacing in different ways for each patient, also make it hard to isolate specific ways to manage specific long-COVID symptoms. Even when two patients have fatigue and brain fog, they may still need different treatments based on the complex mix of other symptoms they have. 

“All long-COVID patients are not equal, and it is critical that research focuses on establishing specific descriptions of the disease,” Dr. Azola said. 

The National Institutes of Health is working on this through its long-COVID Recover Initiative. It’s unclear how long it will take for this research to yield enough definitive information to inform long-COVID treatment guidelines similar to what the agency produced for acute coronavirus infections, and it didn’t respond to questions about the timeline. 

But over the next few months, the National Institutes of Health expects to begin several clinical trials focused on some of the symptoms that doctors are seeing most often in their clinics, like fatigue, brain fog, exercise intolerance, sleep disturbances, and changes in the nervous system’s ability to regulate key functions like heart rate and body temperature. 

One trial starting in January will examine whether the COVID-19 drug Paxlovid can help. A recent preprint Department of Veterans Affairs study showed patients treated with Paxlovid were less likely to get long COVID in the first place.

Some professionals aren’t waiting for the agency. The LongCovid Research Consortium links researchers from Harvard and Stanford universities; the University of California, San Francisco; the J. Craig Venter Institute; Johns Hopkins University; the University of Pennsylvania; Mount Sinai; Cardiff; and Yale who are studying, for instance, whether tiny blood clots contribute to long COVID and whether drugs can reduce or eliminate them.

“Given the widespread and diverse impact the virus has on the human body, it is unlikely that there will be one cure, one treatment,” said Gary H. Gibbons, MD, director of the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute at the National Institutes of Health. “This is why there will be multiple clinical trials over the coming months that study a range of symptoms, underlying causes, risk factors, outcomes, and potential strategies for treatment and prevention, in people of all races, ethnicities, genders, and ages.”

A version of this article first appeared on WebMD.com.

Diagnosing long COVID is something of an art for doctors who, without any formal criteria, say they know it when they see it. Treating the condition requires equal combinations of skill, experience, and intuition, and doctors waiting for guidelines have started cobbling together treatment plans designed to ease the worst symptoms.

Their work is urgent. In the United States alone, as many as 29 million people have long COVID, according to estimates from the American Academy of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation.

“Patients with long COVID have on average at least 14 different symptoms involving nine or more different organ systems, so a holistic approach to treatment is essential,” said Janna Friedly, MD, executive director of the Post-COVID Rehabilitation and Recovery Clinic at the University of Washington in Seattle. 

For acute COVID cases, the National Institutes of Health has treatment guidelines that are taking a lot of the guesswork out of managing patients’ complex mix of symptoms. This has made it easier for primary care providers to manage people with milder cases and for specialists to come up with effective treatment plans for those with severe illness. But no such guidelines exist for long COVID, and this is making it harder for many doctors – particularly in primary care – to determine the best treatment. 

While there isn’t a single treatment that is effective for all long-COVID symptoms – and nothing is approved by the Food and Drug Administration specifically for this syndrome – doctors do have tools, Dr. Friedly said. 

“We always start with the basics – making sure we help patients get enough restorative sleep, optimizing their nutrition, ensuring proper hydration, reducing stress, breathing exercises, and restorative exercise – because all of these are critically important to helping people’s immune system stay as healthy as possible,” she said. “In addition, we help people manage the anxiety and depression that may be exacerbating their symptoms.”

Fatigue is an obvious target. Widely available screening tools, including assessments that have been used in cancer patients and people with chronic fatigue syndrome, can pinpoint how bad symptoms are in long-COVID patients. 

“Fatigue is generally the No. 1 symptom,” said Monica Verduzco-Gutierrez, MD, chair of rehabilitation medicine and director of the COVID-19 Recovery Clinic at the University of Texas Health Science Center in San Antonio. “If a patient has this, then their therapy program has to look very different, because they actually do better with pacing themselves.”

This was the first symptom tackled in a series of long-COVID treatment guidelines issued by the medical society representing many of the providers on the front lines with these patients every day – the American Academy of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation. These fatigue guidelines stress the importance of rest, energy conservation, and proper hydration. 

For patients with only mild fatigue who can still keep up with essential activities like work and school, activity programs may begin with a gradual return to daily routines such as housework or going out with friends. As long as they have no setbacks, patients can also start with light aerobic exercise and make it more intense and frequent over time. As long as they have no setbacks in symptoms, they can ramp up exercise by about 10% every 10 days. 

But with severe fatigue, this is too much, too soon. Activity plans are more apt to start with only light stretching and progress to light muscle strengthening before any aerobic exercise enters the picture. 

“Traditional exercise programs may be harmful to some patients with long COVID,” said Dr. Verduzco-Gutierrez. “Many cannot tolerate graded exercise [where exertion slowly ramps up], and it actually can make them worse.” 

There’s less consensus on other options for treating fatigue, like prescription medications, dietary supplements, and acupuncture. Some doctors have tried prescription drugs like the antiviral and movement disorder medication amantadine, the narcolepsy drug modafinil, and the stimulant methylphenidate, which have been studied for managing fatigue in patients with other conditions like cancer, multiple sclerosis, traumatic brain injuries, and Parkinson’s disease. But there isn’t yet clear evidence from clinical trials about how well these options work for long COVID. 

Similarly, interventions to tackle neurological symptoms and cognitive problems borrow a page from treatments used for other conditions like stroke and dementia – but require changes to meet the needs of those with long COVID. Four in five long-COVID patients with neurological and cognitive issues have brain fog, while more than two-thirds have headaches, and more than half have numbness and tingling in their extremities, loss of taste, loss of smell, and muscle pain, one study suggests.

Patients with deficits in areas like memory, attention, executive function, and visual and spatial planning may get speech therapy or occupational therapy, for example – both approaches that are common in people with cognitive decline caused by other medical conditions. 

Doctors also promote good sleep practices and treating any mood disorders – both of which can contribute to cognitive problems. But they often have to skip one of the best interventions for improving brain function – exercise – because so many long-COVID patients struggle with fatigue and exertion or have cardiovascular issues that limit their exercise. 

The lack of formal guidelines is especially a problem because there aren’t nearly enough specialists to manage the surge of patients who need treatment for issues like fatigue and brain fog. And without guidelines, primary care providers lack a reliable road map to guide referrals that many patients may need. 

“Given the complexity of long COVID and the wide range of symptoms and medical issues associated with long COVID, most physicians, regardless of specialty, will need to evaluate and treat long-COVID symptoms,” said Dr. Friedly. “And yet, most do not have the knowledge or experience to effectively manage long-COVID symptoms, so having guidelines that can be updated as more research is conducted is critical.”

One barrier to developing guidelines for long COVID is the lack of research into the biological causes of fatigue and autonomic dysfunction – nervous system damage that can impact critical things like blood pressure, digestion, and body temperature – that affect so many long-COVID patients, said Alba Miranda Azola, MD, codirector of the Post-Acute COVID-19 Team at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. 

Research is also progressing much more slowly for long COVID than it did for those hospitalized with severe acute infections. The logistics of running rigorous studies to prove which treatments work best for specific symptoms – information needed to create definitive treatment guidelines – are much more complicated for people with long COVID who live at home and may be too exhausted or too preoccupied with their daily lives to take part in research. 

The vast number of symptoms, surfacing in different ways for each patient, also make it hard to isolate specific ways to manage specific long-COVID symptoms. Even when two patients have fatigue and brain fog, they may still need different treatments based on the complex mix of other symptoms they have. 

“All long-COVID patients are not equal, and it is critical that research focuses on establishing specific descriptions of the disease,” Dr. Azola said. 

The National Institutes of Health is working on this through its long-COVID Recover Initiative. It’s unclear how long it will take for this research to yield enough definitive information to inform long-COVID treatment guidelines similar to what the agency produced for acute coronavirus infections, and it didn’t respond to questions about the timeline. 

But over the next few months, the National Institutes of Health expects to begin several clinical trials focused on some of the symptoms that doctors are seeing most often in their clinics, like fatigue, brain fog, exercise intolerance, sleep disturbances, and changes in the nervous system’s ability to regulate key functions like heart rate and body temperature. 

One trial starting in January will examine whether the COVID-19 drug Paxlovid can help. A recent preprint Department of Veterans Affairs study showed patients treated with Paxlovid were less likely to get long COVID in the first place.

Some professionals aren’t waiting for the agency. The LongCovid Research Consortium links researchers from Harvard and Stanford universities; the University of California, San Francisco; the J. Craig Venter Institute; Johns Hopkins University; the University of Pennsylvania; Mount Sinai; Cardiff; and Yale who are studying, for instance, whether tiny blood clots contribute to long COVID and whether drugs can reduce or eliminate them.

“Given the widespread and diverse impact the virus has on the human body, it is unlikely that there will be one cure, one treatment,” said Gary H. Gibbons, MD, director of the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute at the National Institutes of Health. “This is why there will be multiple clinical trials over the coming months that study a range of symptoms, underlying causes, risk factors, outcomes, and potential strategies for treatment and prevention, in people of all races, ethnicities, genders, and ages.”

A version of this article first appeared on WebMD.com.

Diagnosing long COVID is something of an art for doctors who, without any formal criteria, say they know it when they see it. Treating the condition requires equal combinations of skill, experience, and intuition, and doctors waiting for guidelines have started cobbling together treatment plans designed to ease the worst symptoms.

Their work is urgent. In the United States alone, as many as 29 million people have long COVID, according to estimates from the American Academy of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation.

“Patients with long COVID have on average at least 14 different symptoms involving nine or more different organ systems, so a holistic approach to treatment is essential,” said Janna Friedly, MD, executive director of the Post-COVID Rehabilitation and Recovery Clinic at the University of Washington in Seattle. 

For acute COVID cases, the National Institutes of Health has treatment guidelines that are taking a lot of the guesswork out of managing patients’ complex mix of symptoms. This has made it easier for primary care providers to manage people with milder cases and for specialists to come up with effective treatment plans for those with severe illness. But no such guidelines exist for long COVID, and this is making it harder for many doctors – particularly in primary care – to determine the best treatment. 

While there isn’t a single treatment that is effective for all long-COVID symptoms – and nothing is approved by the Food and Drug Administration specifically for this syndrome – doctors do have tools, Dr. Friedly said. 

“We always start with the basics – making sure we help patients get enough restorative sleep, optimizing their nutrition, ensuring proper hydration, reducing stress, breathing exercises, and restorative exercise – because all of these are critically important to helping people’s immune system stay as healthy as possible,” she said. “In addition, we help people manage the anxiety and depression that may be exacerbating their symptoms.”

Fatigue is an obvious target. Widely available screening tools, including assessments that have been used in cancer patients and people with chronic fatigue syndrome, can pinpoint how bad symptoms are in long-COVID patients. 

“Fatigue is generally the No. 1 symptom,” said Monica Verduzco-Gutierrez, MD, chair of rehabilitation medicine and director of the COVID-19 Recovery Clinic at the University of Texas Health Science Center in San Antonio. “If a patient has this, then their therapy program has to look very different, because they actually do better with pacing themselves.”

This was the first symptom tackled in a series of long-COVID treatment guidelines issued by the medical society representing many of the providers on the front lines with these patients every day – the American Academy of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation. These fatigue guidelines stress the importance of rest, energy conservation, and proper hydration. 

For patients with only mild fatigue who can still keep up with essential activities like work and school, activity programs may begin with a gradual return to daily routines such as housework or going out with friends. As long as they have no setbacks, patients can also start with light aerobic exercise and make it more intense and frequent over time. As long as they have no setbacks in symptoms, they can ramp up exercise by about 10% every 10 days. 

But with severe fatigue, this is too much, too soon. Activity plans are more apt to start with only light stretching and progress to light muscle strengthening before any aerobic exercise enters the picture. 

“Traditional exercise programs may be harmful to some patients with long COVID,” said Dr. Verduzco-Gutierrez. “Many cannot tolerate graded exercise [where exertion slowly ramps up], and it actually can make them worse.” 

There’s less consensus on other options for treating fatigue, like prescription medications, dietary supplements, and acupuncture. Some doctors have tried prescription drugs like the antiviral and movement disorder medication amantadine, the narcolepsy drug modafinil, and the stimulant methylphenidate, which have been studied for managing fatigue in patients with other conditions like cancer, multiple sclerosis, traumatic brain injuries, and Parkinson’s disease. But there isn’t yet clear evidence from clinical trials about how well these options work for long COVID. 

Similarly, interventions to tackle neurological symptoms and cognitive problems borrow a page from treatments used for other conditions like stroke and dementia – but require changes to meet the needs of those with long COVID. Four in five long-COVID patients with neurological and cognitive issues have brain fog, while more than two-thirds have headaches, and more than half have numbness and tingling in their extremities, loss of taste, loss of smell, and muscle pain, one study suggests.

Patients with deficits in areas like memory, attention, executive function, and visual and spatial planning may get speech therapy or occupational therapy, for example – both approaches that are common in people with cognitive decline caused by other medical conditions. 

Doctors also promote good sleep practices and treating any mood disorders – both of which can contribute to cognitive problems. But they often have to skip one of the best interventions for improving brain function – exercise – because so many long-COVID patients struggle with fatigue and exertion or have cardiovascular issues that limit their exercise. 

The lack of formal guidelines is especially a problem because there aren’t nearly enough specialists to manage the surge of patients who need treatment for issues like fatigue and brain fog. And without guidelines, primary care providers lack a reliable road map to guide referrals that many patients may need. 

“Given the complexity of long COVID and the wide range of symptoms and medical issues associated with long COVID, most physicians, regardless of specialty, will need to evaluate and treat long-COVID symptoms,” said Dr. Friedly. “And yet, most do not have the knowledge or experience to effectively manage long-COVID symptoms, so having guidelines that can be updated as more research is conducted is critical.”

One barrier to developing guidelines for long COVID is the lack of research into the biological causes of fatigue and autonomic dysfunction – nervous system damage that can impact critical things like blood pressure, digestion, and body temperature – that affect so many long-COVID patients, said Alba Miranda Azola, MD, codirector of the Post-Acute COVID-19 Team at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. 

Research is also progressing much more slowly for long COVID than it did for those hospitalized with severe acute infections. The logistics of running rigorous studies to prove which treatments work best for specific symptoms – information needed to create definitive treatment guidelines – are much more complicated for people with long COVID who live at home and may be too exhausted or too preoccupied with their daily lives to take part in research. 

The vast number of symptoms, surfacing in different ways for each patient, also make it hard to isolate specific ways to manage specific long-COVID symptoms. Even when two patients have fatigue and brain fog, they may still need different treatments based on the complex mix of other symptoms they have. 

“All long-COVID patients are not equal, and it is critical that research focuses on establishing specific descriptions of the disease,” Dr. Azola said. 

The National Institutes of Health is working on this through its long-COVID Recover Initiative. It’s unclear how long it will take for this research to yield enough definitive information to inform long-COVID treatment guidelines similar to what the agency produced for acute coronavirus infections, and it didn’t respond to questions about the timeline. 

But over the next few months, the National Institutes of Health expects to begin several clinical trials focused on some of the symptoms that doctors are seeing most often in their clinics, like fatigue, brain fog, exercise intolerance, sleep disturbances, and changes in the nervous system’s ability to regulate key functions like heart rate and body temperature. 

One trial starting in January will examine whether the COVID-19 drug Paxlovid can help. A recent preprint Department of Veterans Affairs study showed patients treated with Paxlovid were less likely to get long COVID in the first place.

Some professionals aren’t waiting for the agency. The LongCovid Research Consortium links researchers from Harvard and Stanford universities; the University of California, San Francisco; the J. Craig Venter Institute; Johns Hopkins University; the University of Pennsylvania; Mount Sinai; Cardiff; and Yale who are studying, for instance, whether tiny blood clots contribute to long COVID and whether drugs can reduce or eliminate them.

“Given the widespread and diverse impact the virus has on the human body, it is unlikely that there will be one cure, one treatment,” said Gary H. Gibbons, MD, director of the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute at the National Institutes of Health. “This is why there will be multiple clinical trials over the coming months that study a range of symptoms, underlying causes, risk factors, outcomes, and potential strategies for treatment and prevention, in people of all races, ethnicities, genders, and ages.”

A version of this article first appeared on WebMD.com.

Results of a new study indicate that opt-out HIV testing, in particular “notional consent testing” where a patient is not asked or counseled before conducting the test, is an effective tool for identifying undiagnosed HIV cases in populations with an HIV positivity rate greater than 0.2%.

On implementation of opt-out testing of patients aged 18-59 years admitted to the ED at St. George’s University Hospital in London, the proportion of tests performed increased from 57.9% to 69%. Upon increasing the age range to those 16 and older and implementing notional consent, overall testing coverage improved to 74.2%.

“An opt-out HIV testing program in the emergency department provides an excellent opportunity to diagnose patients who do not perceive themselves to be at risk or who have never tested before,” lead author Rebecca Marchant, MBBS, of St. George’s Hospital, said in an interview.

The study was published online in HIV Medicine.

She continued, “I think this take-away message would be applicable to other countries with prevalence of HIV greater than 2 per 1,000 people, as routine HIV testing in areas of high prevalence removes the need to target testing of specific populations, potentially preventing stigmatization.”

Despite excellent uptake of HIV testing in antenatal and sexual health services, 6% of people living in the United Kingdom are unaware of their status, and up to 42% of people living with HIV are diagnosed at a late stage of infection. Because blood is routinely drawn in EDs, it’s an excellent opportunity for increased testing. Late-stage diagnosis carries an increased risk of developing an AIDS-related illness, a sevenfold increase in risk for death in the first year after diagnosis, and increased rates of HIV transmission and health care costs.

The study was conducted in a region of London that has an HIV prevalence of 5.4 cases per 1,000 residents aged 15-59 years. Opt-out HIV testing was implemented in February 2019 for people aged 18-59, and in March 2021, this was changed to include those aged 16-plus years along with a move to notional consent.

Out of 78,333 HIV tests, there were 1054 reactive results. Of these, 728 (69%) were known people living with HIV, 8 (0.8%) were not contactable, 2 (0.2%) retested elsewhere and 3 (0.3%) declined a retest. A total of 259 false positives were determined by follow-up testing.

Of those who received a confirmed HIV diagnosis, 50 (4.8%) were newly diagnosed. HIV was suspected in only 22% of these people, and 48% had never previously tested for the virus. New diagnoses were 80% male with a median age of 42 years. CD4 counts varied widely (3 cells/mcL to 1,344 cells/mcL), with 60% diagnosed at a late stage (CD4 < 350 cells/mcL) and 40% with advanced immunosuppression (CD4 < 200 cells/mcL).

“It did not surprise me that heterosexuals made up 62% of all new diagnoses,” Dr. Marchant noted. “This is because routine opt-out testing in the ED offers the opportunity to test people who don’t perceive themselves to be at risk or who have never tested before, and I believe heterosexual people are more likely to fit into those categories. In London, new HIV diagnoses amongst men who have sex with men have fallen year on year likely due to pre-exposure prophylaxis being more readily available and a generally good awareness of HIV and testing amongst MSM.”

Michael D. Levine, MD, associate professor of emergency medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles, agreed with its main findings.

“Doing widespread screening of patients in the emergency department is a feasible option,” Dr. Levine, who was not involved with this study, said in an interview. “But it only makes sense to do this in a population with some prevalence of HIV. With some forms of testing, like rapid HIV tests, you only get a presumptive positive and you then have a confirmatory test. The presumptive positives do have false positives associated with them. So if you’re in a population with very few cases of HIV, and you have a significant number of false positives, that’s going to be problematic. It’s going to add a tremendous amount of stress to the patient.”

A version of this article first appeared on Medscape.com.

Results of a new study indicate that opt-out HIV testing, in particular “notional consent testing” where a patient is not asked or counseled before conducting the test, is an effective tool for identifying undiagnosed HIV cases in populations with an HIV positivity rate greater than 0.2%.

On implementation of opt-out testing of patients aged 18-59 years admitted to the ED at St. George’s University Hospital in London, the proportion of tests performed increased from 57.9% to 69%. Upon increasing the age range to those 16 and older and implementing notional consent, overall testing coverage improved to 74.2%.

“An opt-out HIV testing program in the emergency department provides an excellent opportunity to diagnose patients who do not perceive themselves to be at risk or who have never tested before,” lead author Rebecca Marchant, MBBS, of St. George’s Hospital, said in an interview.

The study was published online in HIV Medicine.

She continued, “I think this take-away message would be applicable to other countries with prevalence of HIV greater than 2 per 1,000 people, as routine HIV testing in areas of high prevalence removes the need to target testing of specific populations, potentially preventing stigmatization.”

Despite excellent uptake of HIV testing in antenatal and sexual health services, 6% of people living in the United Kingdom are unaware of their status, and up to 42% of people living with HIV are diagnosed at a late stage of infection. Because blood is routinely drawn in EDs, it’s an excellent opportunity for increased testing. Late-stage diagnosis carries an increased risk of developing an AIDS-related illness, a sevenfold increase in risk for death in the first year after diagnosis, and increased rates of HIV transmission and health care costs.

The study was conducted in a region of London that has an HIV prevalence of 5.4 cases per 1,000 residents aged 15-59 years. Opt-out HIV testing was implemented in February 2019 for people aged 18-59, and in March 2021, this was changed to include those aged 16-plus years along with a move to notional consent.

Out of 78,333 HIV tests, there were 1054 reactive results. Of these, 728 (69%) were known people living with HIV, 8 (0.8%) were not contactable, 2 (0.2%) retested elsewhere and 3 (0.3%) declined a retest. A total of 259 false positives were determined by follow-up testing.

Of those who received a confirmed HIV diagnosis, 50 (4.8%) were newly diagnosed. HIV was suspected in only 22% of these people, and 48% had never previously tested for the virus. New diagnoses were 80% male with a median age of 42 years. CD4 counts varied widely (3 cells/mcL to 1,344 cells/mcL), with 60% diagnosed at a late stage (CD4 < 350 cells/mcL) and 40% with advanced immunosuppression (CD4 < 200 cells/mcL).

“It did not surprise me that heterosexuals made up 62% of all new diagnoses,” Dr. Marchant noted. “This is because routine opt-out testing in the ED offers the opportunity to test people who don’t perceive themselves to be at risk or who have never tested before, and I believe heterosexual people are more likely to fit into those categories. In London, new HIV diagnoses amongst men who have sex with men have fallen year on year likely due to pre-exposure prophylaxis being more readily available and a generally good awareness of HIV and testing amongst MSM.”

Michael D. Levine, MD, associate professor of emergency medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles, agreed with its main findings.

“Doing widespread screening of patients in the emergency department is a feasible option,” Dr. Levine, who was not involved with this study, said in an interview. “But it only makes sense to do this in a population with some prevalence of HIV. With some forms of testing, like rapid HIV tests, you only get a presumptive positive and you then have a confirmatory test. The presumptive positives do have false positives associated with them. So if you’re in a population with very few cases of HIV, and you have a significant number of false positives, that’s going to be problematic. It’s going to add a tremendous amount of stress to the patient.”

A version of this article first appeared on Medscape.com.

Results of a new study indicate that opt-out HIV testing, in particular “notional consent testing” where a patient is not asked or counseled before conducting the test, is an effective tool for identifying undiagnosed HIV cases in populations with an HIV positivity rate greater than 0.2%.

On implementation of opt-out testing of patients aged 18-59 years admitted to the ED at St. George’s University Hospital in London, the proportion of tests performed increased from 57.9% to 69%. Upon increasing the age range to those 16 and older and implementing notional consent, overall testing coverage improved to 74.2%.

“An opt-out HIV testing program in the emergency department provides an excellent opportunity to diagnose patients who do not perceive themselves to be at risk or who have never tested before,” lead author Rebecca Marchant, MBBS, of St. George’s Hospital, said in an interview.

The study was published online in HIV Medicine.

She continued, “I think this take-away message would be applicable to other countries with prevalence of HIV greater than 2 per 1,000 people, as routine HIV testing in areas of high prevalence removes the need to target testing of specific populations, potentially preventing stigmatization.”

Despite excellent uptake of HIV testing in antenatal and sexual health services, 6% of people living in the United Kingdom are unaware of their status, and up to 42% of people living with HIV are diagnosed at a late stage of infection. Because blood is routinely drawn in EDs, it’s an excellent opportunity for increased testing. Late-stage diagnosis carries an increased risk of developing an AIDS-related illness, a sevenfold increase in risk for death in the first year after diagnosis, and increased rates of HIV transmission and health care costs.

The study was conducted in a region of London that has an HIV prevalence of 5.4 cases per 1,000 residents aged 15-59 years. Opt-out HIV testing was implemented in February 2019 for people aged 18-59, and in March 2021, this was changed to include those aged 16-plus years along with a move to notional consent.

Out of 78,333 HIV tests, there were 1054 reactive results. Of these, 728 (69%) were known people living with HIV, 8 (0.8%) were not contactable, 2 (0.2%) retested elsewhere and 3 (0.3%) declined a retest. A total of 259 false positives were determined by follow-up testing.

Of those who received a confirmed HIV diagnosis, 50 (4.8%) were newly diagnosed. HIV was suspected in only 22% of these people, and 48% had never previously tested for the virus. New diagnoses were 80% male with a median age of 42 years. CD4 counts varied widely (3 cells/mcL to 1,344 cells/mcL), with 60% diagnosed at a late stage (CD4 < 350 cells/mcL) and 40% with advanced immunosuppression (CD4 < 200 cells/mcL).

“It did not surprise me that heterosexuals made up 62% of all new diagnoses,” Dr. Marchant noted. “This is because routine opt-out testing in the ED offers the opportunity to test people who don’t perceive themselves to be at risk or who have never tested before, and I believe heterosexual people are more likely to fit into those categories. In London, new HIV diagnoses amongst men who have sex with men have fallen year on year likely due to pre-exposure prophylaxis being more readily available and a generally good awareness of HIV and testing amongst MSM.”

Michael D. Levine, MD, associate professor of emergency medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles, agreed with its main findings.

“Doing widespread screening of patients in the emergency department is a feasible option,” Dr. Levine, who was not involved with this study, said in an interview. “But it only makes sense to do this in a population with some prevalence of HIV. With some forms of testing, like rapid HIV tests, you only get a presumptive positive and you then have a confirmatory test. The presumptive positives do have false positives associated with them. So if you’re in a population with very few cases of HIV, and you have a significant number of false positives, that’s going to be problematic. It’s going to add a tremendous amount of stress to the patient.”

A version of this article first appeared on Medscape.com.

While having proper indoor ventilation is recognized as a way to reduce the spread of COVID-19, a new study from MIT says maintaining the proper relative humidity in indoor spaces like your residence might help keep you healthy.

The “sweet spot” associated with reduced COVID-19 cases and deaths is 40%-60% indoor relative humidity, an MIT news release said. People who maintained indoor relative humidity outside those parameters had higher rates of catching COVID-19. 

Most people are comfortable with 30%-50% relative humidity, researchers said. An airplane cabin has about 20% relative humidity.

Relative humidity is the amount of moisture in the air, compared with the total moisture the air can hold at a given temperature before saturating and forming condensation.

The study was published in The Journal of the Royal Society Interface. Researchers examined COVID-19 data and meteorological measurements from 121 countries from January 2020 through August 2020, before vaccines became available to the public. 

“When outdoor temperatures were below the typical human comfort range, they assumed indoor spaces were heated to reach that comfort range. Based on the added heating, they calculated the associated drop in indoor relative humidity,” the MIT news release said.

The research teams found that when a region reported a rise in COVID-19 cases and deaths, the region’s estimated indoor relative humidity was either lower than 40% or higher than 60%, the release said. 

“There’s potentially a protective effect of this intermediate indoor relative humidity,” said Connor Verheyen, the lead author and a PhD student in medical engineering and medical physics in the Harvard-MIT Program in Health Sciences and Technology.

Widespread use of the 40%-60% indoor humidity range could reduce the need for lockdowns and other widespread restrictions, the study concluded.

“Unlike measures that depend on individual compliance (for example, masking or hand-washing), indoor RH optimization would achieve high compliance because all occupants of a common indoor space would be exposed to similar ambient conditions,” the study said. “Compared to the long timelines and high costs of vaccine production and distribution, humidity control systems could potentially be implemented more quickly and cheaply in certain indoor settings.”

A version of this article first appeared on WebMD.com.

While having proper indoor ventilation is recognized as a way to reduce the spread of COVID-19, a new study from MIT says maintaining the proper relative humidity in indoor spaces like your residence might help keep you healthy.

The “sweet spot” associated with reduced COVID-19 cases and deaths is 40%-60% indoor relative humidity, an MIT news release said. People who maintained indoor relative humidity outside those parameters had higher rates of catching COVID-19. 

Most people are comfortable with 30%-50% relative humidity, researchers said. An airplane cabin has about 20% relative humidity.

Relative humidity is the amount of moisture in the air, compared with the total moisture the air can hold at a given temperature before saturating and forming condensation.

The study was published in The Journal of the Royal Society Interface. Researchers examined COVID-19 data and meteorological measurements from 121 countries from January 2020 through August 2020, before vaccines became available to the public. 

“When outdoor temperatures were below the typical human comfort range, they assumed indoor spaces were heated to reach that comfort range. Based on the added heating, they calculated the associated drop in indoor relative humidity,” the MIT news release said.

The research teams found that when a region reported a rise in COVID-19 cases and deaths, the region’s estimated indoor relative humidity was either lower than 40% or higher than 60%, the release said. 

“There’s potentially a protective effect of this intermediate indoor relative humidity,” said Connor Verheyen, the lead author and a PhD student in medical engineering and medical physics in the Harvard-MIT Program in Health Sciences and Technology.

Widespread use of the 40%-60% indoor humidity range could reduce the need for lockdowns and other widespread restrictions, the study concluded.

“Unlike measures that depend on individual compliance (for example, masking or hand-washing), indoor RH optimization would achieve high compliance because all occupants of a common indoor space would be exposed to similar ambient conditions,” the study said. “Compared to the long timelines and high costs of vaccine production and distribution, humidity control systems could potentially be implemented more quickly and cheaply in certain indoor settings.”

A version of this article first appeared on WebMD.com.

While having proper indoor ventilation is recognized as a way to reduce the spread of COVID-19, a new study from MIT says maintaining the proper relative humidity in indoor spaces like your residence might help keep you healthy.

The “sweet spot” associated with reduced COVID-19 cases and deaths is 40%-60% indoor relative humidity, an MIT news release said. People who maintained indoor relative humidity outside those parameters had higher rates of catching COVID-19. 

Most people are comfortable with 30%-50% relative humidity, researchers said. An airplane cabin has about 20% relative humidity.

Relative humidity is the amount of moisture in the air, compared with the total moisture the air can hold at a given temperature before saturating and forming condensation.

The study was published in The Journal of the Royal Society Interface. Researchers examined COVID-19 data and meteorological measurements from 121 countries from January 2020 through August 2020, before vaccines became available to the public. 

“When outdoor temperatures were below the typical human comfort range, they assumed indoor spaces were heated to reach that comfort range. Based on the added heating, they calculated the associated drop in indoor relative humidity,” the MIT news release said.

The research teams found that when a region reported a rise in COVID-19 cases and deaths, the region’s estimated indoor relative humidity was either lower than 40% or higher than 60%, the release said. 

“There’s potentially a protective effect of this intermediate indoor relative humidity,” said Connor Verheyen, the lead author and a PhD student in medical engineering and medical physics in the Harvard-MIT Program in Health Sciences and Technology.

Widespread use of the 40%-60% indoor humidity range could reduce the need for lockdowns and other widespread restrictions, the study concluded.

“Unlike measures that depend on individual compliance (for example, masking or hand-washing), indoor RH optimization would achieve high compliance because all occupants of a common indoor space would be exposed to similar ambient conditions,” the study said. “Compared to the long timelines and high costs of vaccine production and distribution, humidity control systems could potentially be implemented more quickly and cheaply in certain indoor settings.”

A version of this article first appeared on WebMD.com.

To boost their pay, many nurses pick up extra shifts. But juggling extra work and racking up 50-plus hours a week can take a toll on a nurse’s physical and mental health. Plus, it can diminish quality of care and lead to patient errors.

Medscape’s RN/LPN Compensation Report 2022 found that more than half of RNs and LPNs don’t think they get paid enough. Even though many nurses saw pay increases over the past 2 years, many were still dissatisfied with their earnings. They blamed job stress, staffing shortages, and benefits that cut into their wages.
 

Why do nurses pick up extra shifts?

Most nurses work extra hours for the money. Incentives like getting paid time and a half or scoring a $200 bonus are hard to pass up.

“I’m a single mother with two kids,” said Cynthia West, a critical care nurse in Atlanta. “I want to be able to pay my bills and enjoy my life, too.” So, Ms. West picks up two to three extra shifts a month. She also works on-call for a sexual assault center, earning $350 per exam.

But money isn’t the only reason for some nurses. Trang Robinson travels from her home in Atlanta to Palo Alto, Calif., every other week for her job as a labor and delivery RN.

“If my unit needs extra help, I want to help,” she said. “It’s not about the extra money, although that helps my family; it’s that we’ve been so short-staffed. My colleagues are burned out. Staff members are burned out. When I’m there, I work as much as I can to help out my unit.”

Leslie Wysong, an Atlanta postanesthesia nurse, worked in intensive care during much of COVID. She said the chance to make level 3 pay was rewarding for many nurses, but most weren’t doing it for the money.

“We were doing it to alleviate the strain on our fellow nurses, to get closer to a 2:1 patient/nurse ratio rather than the 3:1 we were dealing with over the pandemic,” she said. “It was to help out our colleagues during a desperate situation.”
 

What are the risks?

The U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration states that a work shift that lasts more than 8 hours can disrupt the body’s sleep/wake cycle. It can also lead to physical and mental fatigue resulting in errors, injuries, and accidents.

And a study published in the American Association of Occupational Health Nurses found that extended shifts or shift work impacted nurses in many ways, including more medication errors, falling asleep during work hours, decreased productivity in the last 4 shift hours (of a 12-hour shift), increased risk of mistakes and near-errors associated with decreased vigilance, critical thinking impairment, and more needlestick injuries.

Another study, published in Rehabilitation Nursing Journal, found even more adverse effects, such as sleep disorders like insomnia and excessive sleepiness; cognitive impairment such as the reduced ability to concentrate, slower reactions times, and reduced ability to remember information; higher rates of injury while on the job; being more likely to engage in overeating and alcohol misuse; GI issues such as abdominal pain, constipation, and heartburn; higher rates of heart disease and high blood pressure; higher risk for breast and prostate cancers, and higher rates of depression and anxiety.

These are risks some nurses aren’t willing to take. For example, Caitlin Riley, a pediatric ED nurse in Ocala, Fla., only picks up extra shifts when she must, like when Hurricane Ian swept through Central Florida.

“I think working extra hours can compromise your quality of care,” she said. “You may make mistakes with things like math calculations or not catch something if you’re not totally ‘in’ it mentally. At the end of the day, it’s your nursing license. Sure, the money is great, but I won’t do anything to compromise losing my license or patient care.”
 

How can nurses boost pay without working extra shifts?

Instead, Ms. Riley returned to school and earned an MSN in health care leadership/management, knowing that an advanced degree could lead to higher-paying work. According to the Medscape report, RNs with master’s and doctoral degrees earned over $10,000 more than those with bachelor’s, associate’s, or RN diplomas.

The report also compiled the following earnings data. The data may help nurses find other ways to raise their salaries without taking on extra shifts.

• Salaried RNs and LPNs made more than hourly paid nurses.
• In-patient hospital RNs and skilled nursing facility LPNs got paid more than nurses in other settings.
• Specialty certifications helped RNs earn more money than nurses without specialty certificates.
• Union RNs and LPNs earned more than nonunion nurses.
• RNs and LPNs who work in big cities or suburbs make more money than those in rural areas.

How to prevent burnout and exhaustion when you work extra shifts

While burnout can happen in any profession, an investigation published in JAMA Network Open suggests it’s prevalent among US nurses. The study found that nurses who worked over 40 hours a week were more likely to experience burnout. However, researchers say that adequate staffing and limiting shift hours may alleviate the problem. Here’s how the nurses in the survey dealt with battle burnout:

• Change departments. Ms. Wysong stepped away from the ICU after COVID and switched to postanesthesia. “The move has made my work life much less stressful,” said Ms. Wysong. “They are all happy endings in postanesthesia.”
• Leave work at work. Ms. Riley said she mentally clocks out as she leaves the hospital. “When I put my papers in my shredder at the end of my shift, I let it go. I walk away knowing I did the best for my patients. Once I’m home, it’s time for me to be with the people I love and to refuel my own sense of happiness with the people that mean the most to me.”
• Take time off. “When I’m burned out, I just don’t come in,” said Ms. Robinson. “If I’m mentally or emotionally drained, I give myself a shift off to decompress, or I don’t pick up extra shifts.”
• Engage in relaxing hobbies. Kris Coleman, an ED nurse in Hardeeville, S.C., typically works three 12-hours shifts and only picks up an extra 4-hour shift once a week. When he’s off, he takes advantage of his time away from work. He said: “Do the things that help you relax on your time off. For me, it’s golfing, fishing, and spending time with my family.”
• Build a support system. “I have a group of friends at work,” said Ms. West. “We talk to each other and vent. Having a good support system, people that are in it with you who get what you’re going through is a helpful way to manage burnout.”

A version of this article first appeared on Medscape.com.

To boost their pay, many nurses pick up extra shifts. But juggling extra work and racking up 50-plus hours a week can take a toll on a nurse’s physical and mental health. Plus, it can diminish quality of care and lead to patient errors.

Medscape’s RN/LPN Compensation Report 2022 found that more than half of RNs and LPNs don’t think they get paid enough. Even though many nurses saw pay increases over the past 2 years, many were still dissatisfied with their earnings. They blamed job stress, staffing shortages, and benefits that cut into their wages.
 

Why do nurses pick up extra shifts?

Most nurses work extra hours for the money. Incentives like getting paid time and a half or scoring a $200 bonus are hard to pass up.

“I’m a single mother with two kids,” said Cynthia West, a critical care nurse in Atlanta. “I want to be able to pay my bills and enjoy my life, too.” So, Ms. West picks up two to three extra shifts a month. She also works on-call for a sexual assault center, earning $350 per exam.

But money isn’t the only reason for some nurses. Trang Robinson travels from her home in Atlanta to Palo Alto, Calif., every other week for her job as a labor and delivery RN.

“If my unit needs extra help, I want to help,” she said. “It’s not about the extra money, although that helps my family; it’s that we’ve been so short-staffed. My colleagues are burned out. Staff members are burned out. When I’m there, I work as much as I can to help out my unit.”

Leslie Wysong, an Atlanta postanesthesia nurse, worked in intensive care during much of COVID. She said the chance to make level 3 pay was rewarding for many nurses, but most weren’t doing it for the money.

“We were doing it to alleviate the strain on our fellow nurses, to get closer to a 2:1 patient/nurse ratio rather than the 3:1 we were dealing with over the pandemic,” she said. “It was to help out our colleagues during a desperate situation.”
 

What are the risks?

The U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration states that a work shift that lasts more than 8 hours can disrupt the body’s sleep/wake cycle. It can also lead to physical and mental fatigue resulting in errors, injuries, and accidents.

And a study published in the American Association of Occupational Health Nurses found that extended shifts or shift work impacted nurses in many ways, including more medication errors, falling asleep during work hours, decreased productivity in the last 4 shift hours (of a 12-hour shift), increased risk of mistakes and near-errors associated with decreased vigilance, critical thinking impairment, and more needlestick injuries.

Another study, published in Rehabilitation Nursing Journal, found even more adverse effects, such as sleep disorders like insomnia and excessive sleepiness; cognitive impairment such as the reduced ability to concentrate, slower reactions times, and reduced ability to remember information; higher rates of injury while on the job; being more likely to engage in overeating and alcohol misuse; GI issues such as abdominal pain, constipation, and heartburn; higher rates of heart disease and high blood pressure; higher risk for breast and prostate cancers, and higher rates of depression and anxiety.

These are risks some nurses aren’t willing to take. For example, Caitlin Riley, a pediatric ED nurse in Ocala, Fla., only picks up extra shifts when she must, like when Hurricane Ian swept through Central Florida.

“I think working extra hours can compromise your quality of care,” she said. “You may make mistakes with things like math calculations or not catch something if you’re not totally ‘in’ it mentally. At the end of the day, it’s your nursing license. Sure, the money is great, but I won’t do anything to compromise losing my license or patient care.”
 

How can nurses boost pay without working extra shifts?

Instead, Ms. Riley returned to school and earned an MSN in health care leadership/management, knowing that an advanced degree could lead to higher-paying work. According to the Medscape report, RNs with master’s and doctoral degrees earned over $10,000 more than those with bachelor’s, associate’s, or RN diplomas.

The report also compiled the following earnings data. The data may help nurses find other ways to raise their salaries without taking on extra shifts.

• Salaried RNs and LPNs made more than hourly paid nurses.
• In-patient hospital RNs and skilled nursing facility LPNs got paid more than nurses in other settings.
• Specialty certifications helped RNs earn more money than nurses without specialty certificates.
• Union RNs and LPNs earned more than nonunion nurses.
• RNs and LPNs who work in big cities or suburbs make more money than those in rural areas.

How to prevent burnout and exhaustion when you work extra shifts

While burnout can happen in any profession, an investigation published in JAMA Network Open suggests it’s prevalent among US nurses. The study found that nurses who worked over 40 hours a week were more likely to experience burnout. However, researchers say that adequate staffing and limiting shift hours may alleviate the problem. Here’s how the nurses in the survey dealt with battle burnout:

• Change departments. Ms. Wysong stepped away from the ICU after COVID and switched to postanesthesia. “The move has made my work life much less stressful,” said Ms. Wysong. “They are all happy endings in postanesthesia.”
• Leave work at work. Ms. Riley said she mentally clocks out as she leaves the hospital. “When I put my papers in my shredder at the end of my shift, I let it go. I walk away knowing I did the best for my patients. Once I’m home, it’s time for me to be with the people I love and to refuel my own sense of happiness with the people that mean the most to me.”
• Take time off. “When I’m burned out, I just don’t come in,” said Ms. Robinson. “If I’m mentally or emotionally drained, I give myself a shift off to decompress, or I don’t pick up extra shifts.”
• Engage in relaxing hobbies. Kris Coleman, an ED nurse in Hardeeville, S.C., typically works three 12-hours shifts and only picks up an extra 4-hour shift once a week. When he’s off, he takes advantage of his time away from work. He said: “Do the things that help you relax on your time off. For me, it’s golfing, fishing, and spending time with my family.”
• Build a support system. “I have a group of friends at work,” said Ms. West. “We talk to each other and vent. Having a good support system, people that are in it with you who get what you’re going through is a helpful way to manage burnout.”

A version of this article first appeared on Medscape.com.

To boost their pay, many nurses pick up extra shifts. But juggling extra work and racking up 50-plus hours a week can take a toll on a nurse’s physical and mental health. Plus, it can diminish quality of care and lead to patient errors.

Medscape’s RN/LPN Compensation Report 2022 found that more than half of RNs and LPNs don’t think they get paid enough. Even though many nurses saw pay increases over the past 2 years, many were still dissatisfied with their earnings. They blamed job stress, staffing shortages, and benefits that cut into their wages.
 

Why do nurses pick up extra shifts?

Most nurses work extra hours for the money. Incentives like getting paid time and a half or scoring a $200 bonus are hard to pass up.

“I’m a single mother with two kids,” said Cynthia West, a critical care nurse in Atlanta. “I want to be able to pay my bills and enjoy my life, too.” So, Ms. West picks up two to three extra shifts a month. She also works on-call for a sexual assault center, earning $350 per exam.

But money isn’t the only reason for some nurses. Trang Robinson travels from her home in Atlanta to Palo Alto, Calif., every other week for her job as a labor and delivery RN.

“If my unit needs extra help, I want to help,” she said. “It’s not about the extra money, although that helps my family; it’s that we’ve been so short-staffed. My colleagues are burned out. Staff members are burned out. When I’m there, I work as much as I can to help out my unit.”

Leslie Wysong, an Atlanta postanesthesia nurse, worked in intensive care during much of COVID. She said the chance to make level 3 pay was rewarding for many nurses, but most weren’t doing it for the money.

“We were doing it to alleviate the strain on our fellow nurses, to get closer to a 2:1 patient/nurse ratio rather than the 3:1 we were dealing with over the pandemic,” she said. “It was to help out our colleagues during a desperate situation.”
 

What are the risks?

The U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration states that a work shift that lasts more than 8 hours can disrupt the body’s sleep/wake cycle. It can also lead to physical and mental fatigue resulting in errors, injuries, and accidents.

And a study published in the American Association of Occupational Health Nurses found that extended shifts or shift work impacted nurses in many ways, including more medication errors, falling asleep during work hours, decreased productivity in the last 4 shift hours (of a 12-hour shift), increased risk of mistakes and near-errors associated with decreased vigilance, critical thinking impairment, and more needlestick injuries.

Another study, published in Rehabilitation Nursing Journal, found even more adverse effects, such as sleep disorders like insomnia and excessive sleepiness; cognitive impairment such as the reduced ability to concentrate, slower reactions times, and reduced ability to remember information; higher rates of injury while on the job; being more likely to engage in overeating and alcohol misuse; GI issues such as abdominal pain, constipation, and heartburn; higher rates of heart disease and high blood pressure; higher risk for breast and prostate cancers, and higher rates of depression and anxiety.

These are risks some nurses aren’t willing to take. For example, Caitlin Riley, a pediatric ED nurse in Ocala, Fla., only picks up extra shifts when she must, like when Hurricane Ian swept through Central Florida.

“I think working extra hours can compromise your quality of care,” she said. “You may make mistakes with things like math calculations or not catch something if you’re not totally ‘in’ it mentally. At the end of the day, it’s your nursing license. Sure, the money is great, but I won’t do anything to compromise losing my license or patient care.”
 

How can nurses boost pay without working extra shifts?

Instead, Ms. Riley returned to school and earned an MSN in health care leadership/management, knowing that an advanced degree could lead to higher-paying work. According to the Medscape report, RNs with master’s and doctoral degrees earned over $10,000 more than those with bachelor’s, associate’s, or RN diplomas.

The report also compiled the following earnings data. The data may help nurses find other ways to raise their salaries without taking on extra shifts.

• Salaried RNs and LPNs made more than hourly paid nurses.
• In-patient hospital RNs and skilled nursing facility LPNs got paid more than nurses in other settings.
• Specialty certifications helped RNs earn more money than nurses without specialty certificates.
• Union RNs and LPNs earned more than nonunion nurses.
• RNs and LPNs who work in big cities or suburbs make more money than those in rural areas.

How to prevent burnout and exhaustion when you work extra shifts

While burnout can happen in any profession, an investigation published in JAMA Network Open suggests it’s prevalent among US nurses. The study found that nurses who worked over 40 hours a week were more likely to experience burnout. However, researchers say that adequate staffing and limiting shift hours may alleviate the problem. Here’s how the nurses in the survey dealt with battle burnout:

• Change departments. Ms. Wysong stepped away from the ICU after COVID and switched to postanesthesia. “The move has made my work life much less stressful,” said Ms. Wysong. “They are all happy endings in postanesthesia.”
• Leave work at work. Ms. Riley said she mentally clocks out as she leaves the hospital. “When I put my papers in my shredder at the end of my shift, I let it go. I walk away knowing I did the best for my patients. Once I’m home, it’s time for me to be with the people I love and to refuel my own sense of happiness with the people that mean the most to me.”
• Take time off. “When I’m burned out, I just don’t come in,” said Ms. Robinson. “If I’m mentally or emotionally drained, I give myself a shift off to decompress, or I don’t pick up extra shifts.”
• Engage in relaxing hobbies. Kris Coleman, an ED nurse in Hardeeville, S.C., typically works three 12-hours shifts and only picks up an extra 4-hour shift once a week. When he’s off, he takes advantage of his time away from work. He said: “Do the things that help you relax on your time off. For me, it’s golfing, fishing, and spending time with my family.”
• Build a support system. “I have a group of friends at work,” said Ms. West. “We talk to each other and vent. Having a good support system, people that are in it with you who get what you’re going through is a helpful way to manage burnout.”

A version of this article first appeared on Medscape.com.

The patient safety record of U.S. hospitals improved over the past decade, according to the 10th annual report from nonprofit the Leapfrog Group, a national nonprofit organization focused on health care safety and quality.

For five outcome measures, the safety improvements saved an estimated 16,000 lives during the 10-year period, the report said. These included two “never” events that both declined by approximately 25%: incidents of falls and trauma and incidents of objects unintentionally left in a body after surgery.

There were also decreases in three health care–associated infections, including methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), which decreased by 22%; central line–associated bloodstream infection (CLABSI), which fell by 43%; and Clostridioides difficile infection (C. Diff), which declined by 8%.

The patient safety record of U.S. hospitals improved over the past decade, according to the report.

“Never in history have we seen across-the-board improvement in patient safety until this last decade, coinciding with the history of the [Leapfrog] Hospital Safety Grade,” said Leah Binder, president and CEO of the Leapfrog Group, in a news release. “We salute hospitals for this milestone and encourage them to accelerate their hard work saving patient lives.”

During the past decade, the report noted, hospitals have widely adopted technology and staffing strategies that can protect patients from preventable harm and death. Leapfrog cited a nearly sevenfold increase in the adoption of computerized provider order entry, which can reduce medication errors by more than 40%. 

However, federal health officials separately have reported that the pandemic may have eroded some of those gains.

The Leapfrog report also cited a recent study, published in JAMA, that found that the rates of preventable adverse events in hospitalized patients – including adverse drug events, hospital-acquired infections, postprocedure events, and hospital-acquired pressure ulcers and falls – significantly declined between 2010 and 2019.

That study pointed to specific decreases in the rates of adverse events for patients admitted for myocardial infarction, heart failure, pneumonia, and major surgical procedures. There were also significant drops in adverse events for all other conditions, the study found.

Quality improvement efforts targeting those four conditions might have partly accounted for the lower rates of adverse events in patients with the conditions, the study observed. But “similar interventions did not occur for most of the conditions represented in the ‘all other conditions’ group,” it said.

In a 2019 report by the U.S. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), the agency noted that from 2000 to 2017, there had been gains in nearly two-thirds of patient-safety measures in acute, post-acute, and ambulatory care. Hospital safety improved on nine metrics and was unchanged on three. For example, from 2014 to 2017, the number of some hospital-acquired conditions, including adverse drug events and C. Diff infections, dropped about 20%.

However, in an article this past February, officials of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) said they had observed deterioration on multiple patient-safety metrics since the start of the pandemic. For example, central line infections, which had dropped by 31% in the five years before the COVID-19 outbreak, jumped 28% in the second quarter of 2020, compared with the prior-year period.

Commenting on these developments, the CMS authors said “the fact that the pandemic degraded patient safety so quickly and severely suggests that our health care system lacks a sufficiently resilient safety culture and infrastructure.”

A version of this article first appeared on Medscape.com.

The patient safety record of U.S. hospitals improved over the past decade, according to the 10th annual report from nonprofit the Leapfrog Group, a national nonprofit organization focused on health care safety and quality.

For five outcome measures, the safety improvements saved an estimated 16,000 lives during the 10-year period, the report said. These included two “never” events that both declined by approximately 25%: incidents of falls and trauma and incidents of objects unintentionally left in a body after surgery.

There were also decreases in three health care–associated infections, including methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), which decreased by 22%; central line–associated bloodstream infection (CLABSI), which fell by 43%; and Clostridioides difficile infection (C. Diff), which declined by 8%.

The patient safety record of U.S. hospitals improved over the past decade, according to the report.

“Never in history have we seen across-the-board improvement in patient safety until this last decade, coinciding with the history of the [Leapfrog] Hospital Safety Grade,” said Leah Binder, president and CEO of the Leapfrog Group, in a news release. “We salute hospitals for this milestone and encourage them to accelerate their hard work saving patient lives.”

During the past decade, the report noted, hospitals have widely adopted technology and staffing strategies that can protect patients from preventable harm and death. Leapfrog cited a nearly sevenfold increase in the adoption of computerized provider order entry, which can reduce medication errors by more than 40%. 

However, federal health officials separately have reported that the pandemic may have eroded some of those gains.

The Leapfrog report also cited a recent study, published in JAMA, that found that the rates of preventable adverse events in hospitalized patients – including adverse drug events, hospital-acquired infections, postprocedure events, and hospital-acquired pressure ulcers and falls – significantly declined between 2010 and 2019.

That study pointed to specific decreases in the rates of adverse events for patients admitted for myocardial infarction, heart failure, pneumonia, and major surgical procedures. There were also significant drops in adverse events for all other conditions, the study found.

Quality improvement efforts targeting those four conditions might have partly accounted for the lower rates of adverse events in patients with the conditions, the study observed. But “similar interventions did not occur for most of the conditions represented in the ‘all other conditions’ group,” it said.

In a 2019 report by the U.S. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), the agency noted that from 2000 to 2017, there had been gains in nearly two-thirds of patient-safety measures in acute, post-acute, and ambulatory care. Hospital safety improved on nine metrics and was unchanged on three. For example, from 2014 to 2017, the number of some hospital-acquired conditions, including adverse drug events and C. Diff infections, dropped about 20%.

However, in an article this past February, officials of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) said they had observed deterioration on multiple patient-safety metrics since the start of the pandemic. For example, central line infections, which had dropped by 31% in the five years before the COVID-19 outbreak, jumped 28% in the second quarter of 2020, compared with the prior-year period.

Commenting on these developments, the CMS authors said “the fact that the pandemic degraded patient safety so quickly and severely suggests that our health care system lacks a sufficiently resilient safety culture and infrastructure.”

A version of this article first appeared on Medscape.com.

The patient safety record of U.S. hospitals improved over the past decade, according to the 10th annual report from nonprofit the Leapfrog Group, a national nonprofit organization focused on health care safety and quality.

For five outcome measures, the safety improvements saved an estimated 16,000 lives during the 10-year period, the report said. These included two “never” events that both declined by approximately 25%: incidents of falls and trauma and incidents of objects unintentionally left in a body after surgery.

There were also decreases in three health care–associated infections, including methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), which decreased by 22%; central line–associated bloodstream infection (CLABSI), which fell by 43%; and Clostridioides difficile infection (C. Diff), which declined by 8%.

The patient safety record of U.S. hospitals improved over the past decade, according to the report.

“Never in history have we seen across-the-board improvement in patient safety until this last decade, coinciding with the history of the [Leapfrog] Hospital Safety Grade,” said Leah Binder, president and CEO of the Leapfrog Group, in a news release. “We salute hospitals for this milestone and encourage them to accelerate their hard work saving patient lives.”

During the past decade, the report noted, hospitals have widely adopted technology and staffing strategies that can protect patients from preventable harm and death. Leapfrog cited a nearly sevenfold increase in the adoption of computerized provider order entry, which can reduce medication errors by more than 40%. 

However, federal health officials separately have reported that the pandemic may have eroded some of those gains.

The Leapfrog report also cited a recent study, published in JAMA, that found that the rates of preventable adverse events in hospitalized patients – including adverse drug events, hospital-acquired infections, postprocedure events, and hospital-acquired pressure ulcers and falls – significantly declined between 2010 and 2019.

That study pointed to specific decreases in the rates of adverse events for patients admitted for myocardial infarction, heart failure, pneumonia, and major surgical procedures. There were also significant drops in adverse events for all other conditions, the study found.

Quality improvement efforts targeting those four conditions might have partly accounted for the lower rates of adverse events in patients with the conditions, the study observed. But “similar interventions did not occur for most of the conditions represented in the ‘all other conditions’ group,” it said.

In a 2019 report by the U.S. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), the agency noted that from 2000 to 2017, there had been gains in nearly two-thirds of patient-safety measures in acute, post-acute, and ambulatory care. Hospital safety improved on nine metrics and was unchanged on three. For example, from 2014 to 2017, the number of some hospital-acquired conditions, including adverse drug events and C. Diff infections, dropped about 20%.

However, in an article this past February, officials of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) said they had observed deterioration on multiple patient-safety metrics since the start of the pandemic. For example, central line infections, which had dropped by 31% in the five years before the COVID-19 outbreak, jumped 28% in the second quarter of 2020, compared with the prior-year period.

Commenting on these developments, the CMS authors said “the fact that the pandemic degraded patient safety so quickly and severely suggests that our health care system lacks a sufficiently resilient safety culture and infrastructure.”

A version of this article first appeared on Medscape.com.

A less-than-1% decrease in weekly COVID-19 cases in children demonstrated continued stability in the pandemic situation as the nation heads into the holiday season.

“Over the past 6 weeks, weekly reported child cases have plateaued at an average of about 27,000 cases,” the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Children’s Hospital Association said in the latest edition of their joint COVID report.

New cases for the week of Nov. 11-17 totaled 27,899, down by 0.9% from the previous week and just 4 weeks removed from the lowest total of the year: 22,719 for Oct. 14-20. There have been just under 15 million cases of COVID-19 in children since the pandemic began, and children represent 18.3% of cases in all ages, the AAP and CHA reported.

Conditions look favorable for that plateau to continue, despite the upcoming holidays, White House COVID-19 coordinator Ashish Jha said recently. “We are in a very different place and we will remain in a different place,” Dr. Jha said, according to STAT News. “We are now at a point where I believe if you’re up to date on your vaccines, you have access to treatments ... there really should be no restrictions on people’s activities.”

One possible spoiler, an apparent spike in COVID-related hospitalizations in children we reported last week, seems to have been a false alarm. The rate of new admissions for Nov. 11, which preliminary data suggested was 0.48 per 100,000 population, has now been revised with more solid data to 0.20 per 100,000, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“We continue to monitor the recent increases in admissions among children. Some of these may be admissions with COVID-19, not because of COVID-19. Co-infections are being noted in our surveillance systems for hospitalizations among children; as much as 10% of admissions or higher have viruses codetected (RSV, influenza, enterovirus/rhinovirus, and other respiratory viruses),” a CDC spokesperson told this news organization.

For children aged 0-17 years, the current 7-day (Nov. 13-19) average number of new admissions with confirmed COVID is 129 per day, down from 147 for the previous 7-day average. Emergency department visits with diagnosed COVID, measured as a percentage of all ED visits, are largely holding steady. The latest 7-day averages available (Nov. 18) – 1.0% for children aged 0-11 years, 0.7% for 12- to 15-year-olds, and 0.8% in 16- to 17-year-olds – are the same or within a tenth of a percent of the rates recorded on Oct. 18, CDC data show.

New vaccinations for the week of Nov. 10-16 were down just slightly for children under age 5 years and for those aged 5-11 years, with a larger drop seen among 12- to 17-year-olds, the AAP said in its weekly vaccination report. So far, 7.9% of all children under age 5 have received at least one dose of COVID vaccine, as have 39.1% of 5 to 11-year-olds and 71.5% of those aged 12-17years, the CDC said on its COVID Data Tracker.
 

A less-than-1% decrease in weekly COVID-19 cases in children demonstrated continued stability in the pandemic situation as the nation heads into the holiday season.

“Over the past 6 weeks, weekly reported child cases have plateaued at an average of about 27,000 cases,” the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Children’s Hospital Association said in the latest edition of their joint COVID report.

New cases for the week of Nov. 11-17 totaled 27,899, down by 0.9% from the previous week and just 4 weeks removed from the lowest total of the year: 22,719 for Oct. 14-20. There have been just under 15 million cases of COVID-19 in children since the pandemic began, and children represent 18.3% of cases in all ages, the AAP and CHA reported.

Conditions look favorable for that plateau to continue, despite the upcoming holidays, White House COVID-19 coordinator Ashish Jha said recently. “We are in a very different place and we will remain in a different place,” Dr. Jha said, according to STAT News. “We are now at a point where I believe if you’re up to date on your vaccines, you have access to treatments ... there really should be no restrictions on people’s activities.”

One possible spoiler, an apparent spike in COVID-related hospitalizations in children we reported last week, seems to have been a false alarm. The rate of new admissions for Nov. 11, which preliminary data suggested was 0.48 per 100,000 population, has now been revised with more solid data to 0.20 per 100,000, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“We continue to monitor the recent increases in admissions among children. Some of these may be admissions with COVID-19, not because of COVID-19. Co-infections are being noted in our surveillance systems for hospitalizations among children; as much as 10% of admissions or higher have viruses codetected (RSV, influenza, enterovirus/rhinovirus, and other respiratory viruses),” a CDC spokesperson told this news organization.

For children aged 0-17 years, the current 7-day (Nov. 13-19) average number of new admissions with confirmed COVID is 129 per day, down from 147 for the previous 7-day average. Emergency department visits with diagnosed COVID, measured as a percentage of all ED visits, are largely holding steady. The latest 7-day averages available (Nov. 18) – 1.0% for children aged 0-11 years, 0.7% for 12- to 15-year-olds, and 0.8% in 16- to 17-year-olds – are the same or within a tenth of a percent of the rates recorded on Oct. 18, CDC data show.

New vaccinations for the week of Nov. 10-16 were down just slightly for children under age 5 years and for those aged 5-11 years, with a larger drop seen among 12- to 17-year-olds, the AAP said in its weekly vaccination report. So far, 7.9% of all children under age 5 have received at least one dose of COVID vaccine, as have 39.1% of 5 to 11-year-olds and 71.5% of those aged 12-17years, the CDC said on its COVID Data Tracker.
 

A less-than-1% decrease in weekly COVID-19 cases in children demonstrated continued stability in the pandemic situation as the nation heads into the holiday season.

“Over the past 6 weeks, weekly reported child cases have plateaued at an average of about 27,000 cases,” the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Children’s Hospital Association said in the latest edition of their joint COVID report.

New cases for the week of Nov. 11-17 totaled 27,899, down by 0.9% from the previous week and just 4 weeks removed from the lowest total of the year: 22,719 for Oct. 14-20. There have been just under 15 million cases of COVID-19 in children since the pandemic began, and children represent 18.3% of cases in all ages, the AAP and CHA reported.

Conditions look favorable for that plateau to continue, despite the upcoming holidays, White House COVID-19 coordinator Ashish Jha said recently. “We are in a very different place and we will remain in a different place,” Dr. Jha said, according to STAT News. “We are now at a point where I believe if you’re up to date on your vaccines, you have access to treatments ... there really should be no restrictions on people’s activities.”

One possible spoiler, an apparent spike in COVID-related hospitalizations in children we reported last week, seems to have been a false alarm. The rate of new admissions for Nov. 11, which preliminary data suggested was 0.48 per 100,000 population, has now been revised with more solid data to 0.20 per 100,000, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“We continue to monitor the recent increases in admissions among children. Some of these may be admissions with COVID-19, not because of COVID-19. Co-infections are being noted in our surveillance systems for hospitalizations among children; as much as 10% of admissions or higher have viruses codetected (RSV, influenza, enterovirus/rhinovirus, and other respiratory viruses),” a CDC spokesperson told this news organization.

For children aged 0-17 years, the current 7-day (Nov. 13-19) average number of new admissions with confirmed COVID is 129 per day, down from 147 for the previous 7-day average. Emergency department visits with diagnosed COVID, measured as a percentage of all ED visits, are largely holding steady. The latest 7-day averages available (Nov. 18) – 1.0% for children aged 0-11 years, 0.7% for 12- to 15-year-olds, and 0.8% in 16- to 17-year-olds – are the same or within a tenth of a percent of the rates recorded on Oct. 18, CDC data show.

New vaccinations for the week of Nov. 10-16 were down just slightly for children under age 5 years and for those aged 5-11 years, with a larger drop seen among 12- to 17-year-olds, the AAP said in its weekly vaccination report. So far, 7.9% of all children under age 5 have received at least one dose of COVID vaccine, as have 39.1% of 5 to 11-year-olds and 71.5% of those aged 12-17years, the CDC said on its COVID Data Tracker.