MedicalResearch.com offers the latest news, interviews, and insights in medical research, covering topics like a, cancer research, addiction, fitness and health.
Occupational Health / 23.04.2025

Imagine a scenario where your employees and team are eager to work and possess an unwavering spirit to deal with unpredictable circumstances, stressful conditions, endless meetings, and tight deadlines. They deliberately and consciously want to step out of their comfort zones and bring the most innovative and creative ideas to the table. However, you must be wondering if this imagination is far-fetched and seems to have zero possibility of happening in reality. Fortunately, you are wrong here. Mental wellness in the workplace is not eradicated by merely reducing the workload or giving more leave. It's not about omission; it's about addition. And the biggest and most effective addition to your workplace will be humor. Yes, the same humor you associate with comedians and actors. This free and accessible tool is not just limited to the stage; it can positively impact your team’s mental wellness and ensure that they feel lighter, relaxed, refreshed, and collaborative. However, integrating humor in the workplace is not about sharing memes or using sarcasm. It's about welcoming levity and leveraging lightheartedness to reduce stress, build confidence and trust, and boost your team's emotional capability to handle volatile situations. Humor allows the existence of moments of laughter when the team is under high pressure or is stuck on a problem for hours. It allows you to clear mental fog and give your team the resilience to look beyond the generic solutions and melt the stress. “Laughter Rx” is a revolutionary concept. With Tedx-style topical webinars for team-building and wellness initiatives, you can foster a sense of constant learning and development. With a flexible drop-in format for those who want to observe, you can instill skills and concepts about mental wellness, along with unlimited laughter. The best gift for your team would be to book team-building workshops for employees which can become the starting point for promoting mental wellness in your organization. In this article, we will look at how integrating humor in the workplace improves wellness, and concepts such as Laughter Rx can aid in using levity as a stress buster for your teams. By the end, you will be cognizant of all the benefits of humor in the workplace and how it is essential for sustained mental wellness. (more…)
Author Interviews, CDC, COVID -19 Coronavirus, Emory, JAMA, Occupational Health / 12.03.2021

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Jesse T. Jacob, MD School of Medicine Director, Antibiotic Stewardship Program Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? Response: Since coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) was recognized in the United States in January 2020, the risk of infection with severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) attributed to exposures in the health care workplace has been studied with conflicting results, and the role of job functions (such as nurse) or specific workplace activities, including care for individuals with known and unknown SARS-CoV-2 positivity, increase the risk of SARS-CoV-2 infection. We assessed more than 24,000 healthcare providers between April and August 2020 across four large academic medical systems (Emory, Johns Hopkins, Rush University Medical Center, and University of Maryland) which collaborate in the CDC’s Prevention Epicenter Program and conduct innovative infection prevention research. Each site conducted voluntary COVID-19 antibody testing on its health care workers, as well as offered a questionnaire/survey on the employees’ occupational activities and possible exposures to individuals with COVID-19 infection both inside and outside the workplace. We also looked at three-digit residential zip-code prefixes to determine COVID-19 prevalence in communities.   (more…)
Author Interviews, Gender Differences, Occupational Health, Sexual Health / 11.07.2018

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Leah Halper, PhD Associate Director Office of Student Life Center for the Study of Student Life Columbus, OH 43210 MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?  Response: We started to run these studies in 2014 given mutual research interests that we shared. We knew that there was much research on sexual harassment that focused on the victim, the victim’s experience and the reporting process for sexual harassment. This work is extremely valuable. We noticed, however, that there was less research on the perpetrator and if there were personality variables related to the likelihood of sexual harassment. In our studies, we demonstrate that a personality variable (Fear of Negative Evaluation, or anxiety that others will see one as incompetent) is related to sexual harassment among men in powerful positions. Our results held up after taking into account other personality variables, such as narcissism and self-esteem. Also, we found that men who felt insecure in their power (i.e., those that were anxious that others would see them as incompetent) were more likely to engage in both quid pro quo harassment – asking for sexual favors in return for something else – and gender harassment – creating a hostile environment for women. (more…)
Author Interviews, Exercise - Fitness / 17.01.2014

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Maike Neuhaus, MPsych Australian Postgraduate Award PhD Candidate Cancer Prevention Research Centre School of Population Health The University of Queensland Herston, QLD 4006 Australia MedicalResearch.com: What are the main findings of the study? Answer: Substantial epidemiological evidence shows that high volumes of sedentary behaviour – simply put  too much sitting- are linked to detrimental health outcomes such as overweight and obesity, type 2 diabetes, some cancers, and all-cause mortality. Desk-based office workers typically spend around 75% of their work hours sitting at their desks or in meetings. Furthermore, they are unlikely to compensate for these high volumes of sitting time at work with less sedentary activities outside of work. Office workers are thus a high-risk group and an important target for intervention. The Stand Up UQ study examined best-practice approaches to reduce excessive sitting in office workers. Three separate groups of administrative office workers from The University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia, participated in this study: One group received height-adjustable workstations only; another group received the same height-adjustable workstations plus additional individual (e.g. face-to-face coaching) and organisational strategies (e.g. management consultation, staff information session) to reduce workplace sitting; the third group served as control group and maintained their usual work-practice. Results showed that relative to the control group, the group receiving height-adjustable workstations and additional strategies had a three-fold greater reduction in sitting time than the group receiving height-adjustable workstations only. These findings have important practical and financial implications for workplaces targeting sitting time reductions. (more…)