The Physician

Impact of Premenstrual Syndrome on Productivity in a Pressure Cooker Manufacturing Industry

Hariraj Sellamuthu, Anjani Kumar — Sat, 20 Apr 2024 00:00:00 -0700

Background: Premenstrual syndrome (PMS) is a condition that affects a woman's emotions, physical health, and behaviour during certain days of the menstrual cycle, generally just before her menses. Past studies show that PMS harms daily activities. This study assessed the impact of PMS on work-related quality of life.

Objectives: The study aims to conduct a premenstrual syndrome assessment, assess its impact on productivity, and provide a baseline premenstrual syndrome and Work-Related Quality of Life assessment so that subsequent assessments can be compared and interpreted. The study also aims to link the effectiveness of control measures, welfare programs, and employee engagement, promoting employee well-being and individual productivity.

Methods: This cross-sectional study was conducted among the women employees of a pressure cooker manufacturing company. 71 eligible women employees were included in this study. Screening for premenstrual syndrome was done using a validated premenstrual syndrome (PMSS Scale), and the impact of premenstrual syndrome was assessed using a work-related quality of life scale (WRQoL).

Results: Around 23% of participants had premenstrual syndrome, and 75% had good work-related quality of life. Around 88% of the study participants without premenstrual syndrome had good work-related quality of life, whereas among the participants with premenstrual syndrome, around 36% only had good WRQoL.

Conclusions: This study’s results showed that one in four women employed had premenstrual syndromes. The majority of the participants had good work-related quality of life, but women employees with PMS had significantly lower quality of life.

Hospital Innovations for the Next Decade

Rahul Chodhari, Professor Indranil Chakravorty MBE PhD FRCP (Lond, Edin) — Sat, 20 Apr 2024 00:00:00 -0700

Ultimately, healthcare innovation leads to improved clinical care, with new technology improving healthcare efficiency, effectiveness, quality, and affordability. With ever-increasing demand on health systems worldwide, the ultimate goal of healthcare innovation is to improve the ability to meet public and personal healthcare needs through the optimization of health systems' performance. In this article, we will discuss hospital-based innovation within the next decade that yields scalable solutions within the fields of preventative, treatment, and infection control healthcare innovation.

Governments face tough choices since medical innovations hold promises and perils. These innovations occur across multiple dimensions, including core sciences, drug development, care delivery, and organizational and business models. In particular, medical technology-related innovations are blossoming, with medical technology patents more numerous and growing faster than pharmaceutical patents over the last decade.

Despite this enormous investment in innovation and the magnitude of the opportunity for innovators to both do good and do well, all too many efforts fail, losing billions of investor resources along the way. [1] Barriers to disruptive innovation are often the public themselves acting through fear, enacting stringent regulation, supported by established professionals afraid to lose income and hospitals their investment in expensive systems. [2]

Integrating Ayurveda with Modern Medicine for Enhanced Patient Care

Rajeev Gupta MBBS, MRCP (UK), FRCPCH (UK), MD — Sat, 20 Apr 2024 00:00:00 -0700

Modern or Western medicine is often the first-line healthcare option due to a strong evidence base, a scientific, systematic approach, and well-defined generalizability of therapies to certain populations. However, this disease-focused model has several limitations, such as no cure for all diseases and the high cost of care. On the other hand, Ayurveda, an ancient system of medicine originating in India, has a holistic approach that emphasizes prevention and lifestyle modification, offers a low-cost model, encourages patient empowerment, and promises significant benefits for generalized healthcare. The integration of the two systems can lead to better patient care. However, Ayurveda also has limitations, and the integration with modern medicine faces barriers such as a lack of rigorous scientific research, standardisation and quality control issues, regulatory hurdles, cultural differences or prejudices, and a paucity of trained practitioners in the West. To overcome these barriers, this paper proposes strategies such as promoting rigorous research, developing stringent standards for Ayurvedic practices and products, regulatory reforms, education and training, and promoting integrative medicine. These strategies aim to bring together the best of both worlds for enhanced patient care.

National MERIT Conference 2024, Manchester, UK

Sai Yuva Ravindran, Deepali Sharma; Indranil Chakravorty — Sat, 20 Apr 2024 00:00:00 -0700

Abstracts selected for publication.

Impact of the Proposed Closure of the NHS Practitioner Mental Health Programme for Doctors and Managers in Secondary Care

Sun, 28 Apr 2024 00:00:00 -0700

To reduce its financial deficit, NHS England decided to cull the funding of the Practitioner Health Programme (PHP), which has been providing confidential mental health services to 110,000 NHS doctors/ senior managers since 2011. This decision was announced when NHS doctors were in a dispute over pay and conditions, AND coincided with increasing prevalence of mental illness, stress and burnout.

This decision raised concerns among doctors' unions, medical royal colleges, and doctors through social media. An open letter asked the Health Secretary to reconsider this decision. Access to primary care doctors was maintained. What appears not to have been considered is that around 50,000 junior doctors, including locally employed doctors and international medical graduates who are in short-term contracts or rotational attachments, are unlikely to meet the waiting time for such ‘secondary care OH services’. In addition, the elephant in the room of a massive challenge of the professional stigma that prevents doctors from accessing mental health support early seems to have been missed.

This editorial briefly explores the causes of a high prevalence of stress and work-related mental illness amongst HCPs, the consequences on their overall health, employing organisations and their patients.