Lifestyle Medicine and Otolaryngology: Embracing the Future

Lifestyle medicine is a relatively new specialty that focuses on behavior change to prevent, treat, and reverse chronic disease and promote wellness. It is relevant to any medical or surgical field that deals with noninfectious chronic disease and to any individual or community pursuing health and wellness. Lifestyle medicine offers evidence-based interventions and tools to foster wellness and resiliency in ourselves and our patients. This commentary gives a brief background of lifestyle medicine and how embracing the discipline could benefit the American Academy of Otolaryngology–Head and Neck Surgery and the field of otolaryngology overall. Specifically, we describe opportunities to improve patient health, promote personal wellness, combat burnout, and foster unity among otolaryngology subspeciality societies.

How the COVID-19 Pandemic Will Change Workplaces, Healthcare Markets and Healthy Living: An Overview and Assessment

The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted most aspects of our lives: how we work, how we socialize, how we provide health care, and how we take care of our most vulnerable members of society. In this perspectives article, we provide a multidisciplinary overview of existing research covering these fields. Moreover, we enrich this research overview with news reporting and insights from a panel of expert practitioners affiliated with the Cornell Institute for Healthy Futures. We sketch existing evidence, focusing on how the pandemic has transformed our lives since March 2020. Then, for each of the fields covered by this article, we propose optimistic perspectives on what healthy living could look like in the future, given the current challenges and opportunities. In particular, we discuss the needed transformations of our workplaces, the health care market, senior living, healthy eating, and personal wellness.

Exploring the Role of Occupational Therapy With Mothers Who Breastfeed

Importance: Occupational therapy practitioners can play a pivotal role in supporting breastfeeding mothers as they transition to and form new routines for this occupation. Objective: To explore whether occupational therapy programming can assist breastfeeding mothers in reaching their personal occupation-based wellness goals. Design: Mixed-methods design that involved development of an occupational profile and a goal attainment scale (GAS). After the intervention, participants rescored their GAS goals and completed a semistructured exit interview. Setting: Nonprofit lactation center located in the suburbs of a large mid-Atlantic U.S. city. Participants: Women recruited through convenience sampling who had been breastfeeding an infant for <6 mo, who were not currently weaning, and who had met with a lactation consultant at least once since giving birth were eligible (N = 17). Intervention: Group occupational therapy that consisted of 10 weekly 1-hr sessions. Topics were based on occupational profiles, GAS scores, and lactation consultant input. Outcomes and Measures: Each participant created and scored three goals using the GAS before and after the intervention. Results: Data from 14 of the 17 participants were analyzed. The average postintervention GAS score was 56.50 (M = 50), indicating that most personal wellness goals were reached. Thematic analysis revealed that occupational therapy programming helped mothers persevere with breastfeeding, feel more confident as new parents, and value both themselves and their baby. Conclusions and Relevance: There is an increasing role for occupational therapy practitioners in helping new mothers reach their personal wellness goals in ways that support their ability to continue breastfeeding. What This Article Adds: Maternal wellness and breastfeeding represent an emerging area of practice in which occupational therapy practitioners can provide new mothers with physical, social, and psychological supports that help them maintain self-efficacy related to breastfeeding and other meaningful occupations. This study provides foundational evidence in support of this collaboration.

Spiritual Atheist Scientists

Spiritual atheists comprise the smallest subset of atheist scientists in the U.S. and U.K. Unlike modernists (who are not spiritual) and culturally religious atheists (who participate in religion), spiritual atheist scientists construct alternative value systems without affiliating with religious traditions. Many cast spirituality in emotional terms of awe and wonder provoked through scientific understanding of the world, while others frame their spirituality in terms of the dimensions of life that cannot be explained through science. Such constructions of spirituality are consequential for secular spiritual practices. For scientists, these involve scientific work itself, morality in relationships, personal wellness practices, and resources for coping with adversity.

Dark Clouds With Silver Linings: Resident Anxieties About COVID-19 Coupled With Program Innovations and Increased Resident Well-Being

ABSTRACT Background The COVID-19 pandemic forced numerous unprecedented systemic changes within residency programs and hospital systems. Objective We explored how the COVID-19 pandemic, and associated changes in clinical and educational experiences, were related to internal medicine residents' well-being in the early months of the pandemic. Methods Across 4 internal medicine residency programs in the Northeast United States that have previously participated in the iCOMPARE study, all 394 residents were invited to participate in a study with open-ended survey prompts about well-being approximately every 2 weeks in academic year 2019–2020. In March and April 2020, survey prompts were refocused to COVID-19. Content analysis revealed themes in residents' open-ended responses to 4 prompts. Results One hundred and eighty-six residents expressed interest, and 88 were randomly selected (47%). There were 4 main themes: (1) in early days of the pandemic, internal medicine residents reported fear and anxiety about uncertainty and lack of personal protective equipment; (2) residents adapted and soon were able to reflect, rest, and pursue personal wellness; (3) communication from programs and health systems was inconsistent early in the pandemic but improved in clarity and frequency; (4) residents appreciated the changes programs had made, including shorter shifts, removal of pre-rounding, and telemedicine. Conclusions COVID-19 introduced many challenges to internal medicine residency programs and to resident well-being. Programs made structural changes to clinical schedules, educational/conference options, and communication that boosted resident well-being. Many residents hoped these changes would continue regardless of the pandemic's course.

Cultural Humility Addressing Racism and Microaggression (CHARM)

Introduction Racism, discrimination and microaggressions experienced by underrepresented nursing students contribute to a loss of confidence, and feelings of sadness and anger.1,2,3 These experiences affect the students’ academic performance, and personal wellness. 1,2,3 There is a need for innovative and accessible resources that provide instruction and promote critical thinking regarding racism and microaggressions in the classroom and clinical setting. The aim of the CHARM project is to provide a toolkit for nursing students regarding how to respond safely and effectively to microaggressions. Method The use of eLearning and simulation games have successfully been used to provide education and problem-solving skills in healthcare when interacting with various groups of individuals. A group of seven nursing students are collaborating with faculty to develop an eLearning Toolkit and virtual simulation games (VSGs) focused on addressing racism and microaggressions. Results To date, the outline of a website that includes access to a pre-learning module and 5 VSGs have been designed. The pre-learning module includes definitions and education regarding the 6-step method to responding to microaggressions.4,5 The VSGs immerse the players into various scenarios where they are provided with options on how to respond in clinical situations and the potential consequences of the response they choose. Discussion This project is a work in progress, and it is hoped that this project will support nursing students, so that they feel less alone. In addition, we hope to improve their confidence and provide resources in managing encounters where racism and microaggressions occur.

Characterisation, Design and Experimentation of a Fabric Based Wearable Joint Sensing Device on Human Elbow

The use of conductive fabrics (CF) in the design of wearables for joint sensing has recently received much interest in a wide range of applications such as robotics, rehabilitation, personal wellness, sports, and entertainment. This paper evaluates a new wearable device concept that comprises a CF strain-voltage sensor embedded as part of an inverted slider-crank mechanism for joint extension sensing. This has the benefit of not requiring anthropometric information from the user to related the joint parameters to the fabric strain readings, as opposed to an existing design. Firstly, we characterize the electro-mechanical property of a commercially available CF. Secondly, we formulate the joint sensing device's geometric synthesis procedure as a constrained revolute joint system, where the CF is designed and introduced as an RPR chain to obtain an inverted slider-crank linkage. Lastly, we designed our wearable sensing device and validated against an ISC linkage fixture representing an elbow joint and an actual healthy human subject's left elbow. The ISC linkage fixture experimental setup shows that our designed joint sensing device can track the elbow extension motion of 140 with a maximum error of 7.66%. The results from our human subject's left elbow show that it can track the elbow flexion-extension at various angular motion, with error ranges between 8.55 to 12.57. These have provided us an average of Spearman's coefficient values rs at 0.95, which was considered an acceptable range.

Benefits of Athletics for Military School Students

This chapter studies the perception of cadets, alumni, and staff of military schools and colleges (N=220) who responded to a survey about the benefits of interscholastic and intramural athletics for students in military schools and colleges. Overwhelmingly, respondents agreed that both athletics build citizens with good character, foster leadership development, improve academic success metrics and overall personal wellness. Respondents surprisingly perceived athletics as slightly less impactful on fostering integrity and respect as well as on dropout prevention and furthering writing skills. Respondents perceive that interscholastic athletics were more likely to deliver positive returns than intramural athletics, even though most military schools and colleges require participation in intramural athletics, and participation in interscholastic athletics is often optional and based on ability level. Overall, there is a strong perception that participation in athletic activities of any kind offer positive returns for cadets attending military schools and colleges.

The development of a novel Wellness Assessment Instrument and its use in the assessment of wellness status in patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease

Purpose: Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is a chronic respiratory disorder that affects health outcomes on multiple levels including overall wellbeing. More specifically, factors such as spiritual wellbeing, and psychological, mental and motivational status which may be at least as important as others, have been rarely studied. This article reports the method of validating a new wellness assessment questionnaire and the status of several wellness domains in patients with COPD. Methods: The study consisted of two phases: first, the development of a new Wellness Questionnaire with the help of focus groups; second, the validation and use of the questionnaire in a cohort of patients with COPD. For focus groups, healthy people ⩾45 years of age with no known comorbidity as well as people with a clinical diagnosis of COPD were invited to participate in the study. Results: Thematic analysis of findings from focus groups and original cohort respondents highlighted some factors that appear to influence wellness status. Five domains were explored as potential markers of wellness in patients with COPD. Quantitative analysis with Spearman correlation demonstrated a significant correlation between Physical/Personal Wellness and other markers of COPD progression such as Global Initiative Obstructive Lung Disease (GOLD; 0.006), force expiratory volume in 1 s (FEV1%; 0.01), health-related quality of life (0.009), multidimensional BOD score and quartile (0.003 and 0.02). Conclusion: The findings suggest that a combination of personal, physical, emotional, mental and other psychological factors is responsible for negative COPD outcomes. While there is a need to validate this new wellness questionnaire in further research, it incorporates new markers of wellness that could benefit management of COPD.

Considering Participants’ Personal Wellness in Conservation-Based Extension Programs: Opportunities for Integrative Development and Evaluation

Extension organizations are at the forefront of water resource issues, using educational programs to drive participant behaviors towards water conservation. The effectiveness of these efforts centers on designing programs with considerations of the factors that will change relevant decisions and behaviors among residential landscape water users. We conducted a statewide study to explore the concept of wellness and well-being, and these characteristics' relationship to water conservation behaviors. Our results show that psychosocial measures influence current and future residential landscape water conservation behaviors differently. Perception of well-being is the more consistent predictor for both current behaviors and future intentions. These results demonstrate an opportunity for those focused on environmental behaviors to pair and embed programs focused on personal well-being to empower communities to work toward achieving conservation goals.https://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/wc370