Blast from the Past Blog

I thought I’d re-post something from my previous blog, The Practical Psychosomaticist, which I cancelled several years ago. The title is “Face Time versus Facebook.” I sound really old in it although it appeared in 2011.

I’m a little more comfortable with the concept of social media nowadays and, despite how ignorant I was back then, I later got accounts in Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. I got rid of them several years later, mainly because all I did was copy my blog posts on them.

The Academy of Psychosomatic Medicine (APM) to which there is a link in the old post below, later changed its name to the Academy of Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry (ACLP), which made good sense. I still have the email message exchange in 2016 with Don R. Lipsitt, who wrote the book “Foundations of Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry: The Bumpy Road to Specialization.” It’s an excellent historical account of the process.

Don liked a post I wrote, entitled “The Time Has Come for ‘Ergasiology’ to Replace ‘Psychosomatic Medicine?” It was a humorous piece which mentioned how many different names had been considered in the past for alternative names for Psychosomatic Medicine. I was actually plugging his book. I don’t think ergasiology was ever considered; I made that part up. But it’s a thing. It was Adolph Meyer’s idea to invent the term from a combination of Greek words for “working” and “doing,” in order to illustrate psychobiology. Don thought “…the Board made a big mistake…” naming our organization Psychosomatic Medicine. He much preferred the term “consultation-liaison psychiatry.” We didn’t use emoticons in our messages.

The Don R. Lipsitt Award for Achievement in Integrated and Collaborative Care was created in 2014 to recognize individuals who demonstrate “excellence and innovation in the integration of mental health with other medical care…”

I don’t think the ACLP uses Facebook anymore, but they do have a Twitter account.

I also included in the old post a link to the Neuroleptic Malignant Information Service (NMSIS). I used to call the NMSIS service early in my career as a consultation-liaison psychiatrist. I often was able to get sound advice from Dr. Stanley Caroff.

Blog: Face Time versus Facebook

You know, I’m astounded by the electronic compensations we’ve made over the years for our increasingly busy schedules which often make it impossible to meet face to face. Frankly, I’ve not kept up. I still think of twittering as something birds do. If you don’t get that little joke, you’re probably not getting mail from the AARP.

The requests for psychiatric consultations are mediated over the electronic medical record and text paging. Technically the medical team that has primary responsibility for a patient’s medical care contacts me with a question about the psychiatric management issues. But it’s not unusual for consultation requests to be mediated by another consultant’s remarks in their note. The primary team simply passes the consultant’s opinion along in a request. They may not even be interested in my opinion.

I sometimes get emails from people who are right across the hall from me. I find it difficult to share the humor in a text message emoticon. And I get more out of face-to-face encounters with real people in the room when a difficult case comes my way and I need to tap into group wisdom to help a patient. These often involve cases of delirium, an acute confusional episode brought on by medical problems that often goes unrecognized or is misidentified as one of the many primary psychiatric issues it typically mimics.

The modern practice of medicine challenges practitioners and patients alike to integrate electronic communication methods into our care systems. And these methods can facilitate education in both directions. When professionals are separated geographically, whether by distances that span a single hospital complex or across continents, electronic communication can connect them.

But I can’t help thinking there are some messages we simply can’t convey with emoticons. By nature, humans communicate largely by nonverbal cues, especially in emotionally charged situations. And I can tell you, emotions get involved when physicians and nurses cue me that someone who has delirium is just another “psych patient” who needs to be transferred to a locked psychiatric unit (although such transfers are sometimes necessary for the patient’s safety).

So, when do we choose between Face Time and Facebook? Do we have to make that choice? Can we do both? When we as medical professionals are trying to resolve amongst ourselves what the next step should be in the assessment and treatment of a delirious patient who could die from an occult medical emergency, how should we communicate about that?

As a purely hypothetical example (though these types of cases do occur), say we suspect a patient has delirium which we think could be part of a rare and dangerous medical condition known as neuroleptic malignant syndrome (NMS). NMS is a complex neuropsychiatric disorder which can be marked by delirium, high fever, and severe muscular rigidity among other symptoms and signs. It can be caused very rarely by exposure to antipsychotic drugs such as Haloperidol or the newer atypical antipsychotics. The delirium can present with another uncommon psychiatric disorder called catatonia, and many experts consider NMS to be a drug-induced form of catatonia. Patients suffering from catatonia can display a variety of behaviors and physiologic abnormalities though they are often mute, immobile, and may display bizarre behaviors such as parroting what other people say to them, assuming very uncomfortable postures for extended periods of time (called waxy flexibility), and very rapid heart rate, sweating, and fever. The treatment of choice is electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) which can be life-saving.

Since NMS is rare, many consulting psychiatrists are often not confident about their ability to diagnose the condition. There may not be any colleagues in their hospital to turn to for advice. One option is to check the internet for a website devoted to educating clinicians about NMS, the Neuroleptic Malignant Syndrome Information Service at www.nmsis.org. The site is run by dedicated physicians who are ready to help clinicians diagnose and treat NMS. Physicians can reach them by telephone or email and there are educational materials on the website as well. I’ve used this service a couple of times and found it helpful. The next two electronic methods I have no experience with at all, but I find them intriguing.

One might be a social network like Facebook. In fact, the Academy of Psychosomatic Medicine (APM) has a Facebook link on their website, www.apm.org. Psychosomaticists can communicate with each other about issues broached at our annual conferences, but probably not discuss cases. Truth to tell, the Facebook site doesn’t look like it’s had many visitors. There are 3 posts which look like they’ve been there for a few months:

Message 1: We have been thinking about using Facebook as a way to continue discussions at the APM conference beyond the lectures themselves. Would anyone be interested in having discussions with the presenters from the APM conference in a forum such as this?

Message 2: This sounds great!

Message 3: I think it’s a very good idea

It’s not exactly scintillating.

Another service could be something called LinkedIn, which I gather is a social network designed for work-at-home professionals to stay connected with colleagues in the outside world. Maybe they should just get out more?

Email is probably the main way many professionals stay connected with each other across the country and around the world. The trouble is you have to wait for your colleague to check email. And there’s text messaging. I just have a little trouble purposely misspelling words to get enough of my message in the tiny text box. And I suppose one could tweet, whatever that is. You should probably just make sure your tweet is not the mating call for an ostrich. Those birds are heavy and can kick you into the middle of next week.

But there’s something about face time that demands the interpersonal communication skills, courtesy, and cooperation needed to solve problems that can’t be reduced to an emoticon.

Factitious Disorder and Civil Commitment

Similar to my previous post on the role of civil commitment and catatonia, I’d like to share my thoughts on what little is known about Factitious Disorder and civil commitment.

There is not much to say, in brief. In fact, many writers can find a lot to say about the other interesting clinical features of Factitious Disorder. That includes me. I wrote the chapter on factitious disorder and malingering in the book I and my former University of Iowa psychiatry department chairperson, Robert G. Robinson, co-edited (Amos, 2010).

The gist of the definition of this disorder is that patients lie about medical or psychiatric symptoms to health care providers to adopt the sick role presumably because they crave attention, especially from doctors. It is distinguished from malingering by not defining malingering as a disorder and identifying external incentives as the major reason to fake medical or psychiatric illness, e.g., escaping penalties or obligations such as incarceration or military service, or obtaining entitlements.

In the DSM-5 it was placed in the Somatic Symptom Disorder Category:

Factitious Disorder Imposed on Self
- A. Falsification of physical or psychological signs or symptoms, or induction of injury or disease, assoc. w/identified deception
- B. Presenting oneself to others as ill, impaired, injured
- C. Deceptive behavior evident even in absence of obvious external rewards
- D. Not better accounted for by another mental d/o like delusional d/o or other psychosis

It can be further specified into single or recurrent episodes. There is also another category, Factitious disorder imposed on another (by proxy in DSM-IV).

Regarding civil commitment, obtaining an order can sometimes be difficult when the standard in a jurisdiction is imminent danger to self, or when judges require a treatment plan for a disorder for which there is little evidence of consistently effective treatment— (Eastwood, S. and J.I. Bisson, Management of Factitious Disorders: A Systematic Review. Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics, 2008. 77(4): p. 209-218.)

The legal climate is further complicated by patients with the disorder who have filed malpractice lawsuits against the doctors who failed to recognized their factitious behavior. Patients have been sued for false claims to insurance companies.

A recently published case report (which makes up the majority of papers published about the disorder) mentions the Eastwood and Bisson review (see above), which indicated that 60% of these patients either refused or failed to appear for psychiatric follow-up. Civil commitment is limited to those with imminent suicide risk, clear evidence of danger to others, or inability to provide for basic self-care needs (Sinha A, Smolik T. Striving to Die: Medical, Legal, and Ethical Dilemmas Behind Factitious Disorder. Cureus. 2021 Feb 9;13(2): e13243. doi: 10.7759/cureus.13243. PMID: 33585147; PMCID: PMC7872498.)

Patients with factitious disorder can self-induce illness in ways that result in severe disfigurement or death, often from unnecessary medical interventions. And they have successfully sued physicians who unwittingly caused iatrogenic harm for failing to recognize their disorder—despite denying the true nature of their feigned illnesses in the first place early on. The cost of their excessive health utilization has been estimated to run in the millions of dollars. Their subterfuge can also result in the physician ignoring genuine disease.

General management principles involved include:

Assess severity, potential for imminent life or limb threat
Thoroughly document evidence
Involve hospital administration/attorneys/ethicists early
Psychiatric consultation early
Treat depression, psychosis, addiction
Confrontational v. nonconfrontational approaches

One published case report described obtaining a commitment order based on the patient’s demonstrated dangerousness from self-induced illness (Johnson, 2000). Another case report described “house arrest” as the intervention (Elmore, 2005). Yet another report discussed an interesting non-coercive “Hospital Management” approach which used “paradoxical free access to the hospital with a designated permanent bed on a medical ward for 1 year—which was apparently successful (Schwarz, 1993). The list of successfully treated patients under court order is short and the likelihood of sustained recovery is probably low.

The civil commitment approach is confrontational and there are proponents for a nonconfrontational approach because it’s difficult to get a court order for involuntary psychiatric hospitalization and often, once a patient with Factitious Disorder is admitted to a locked psychiatric ward, the self-induced illness behavior often simply stops. And there are supporters for the development of a “therapeutic discharge” plan in which hospital administration and clinical staff collaborate to conduct a safe discharge:

Consider involving hospital administration and all health care personnel in a therapeutic discharge plan if it can be done safely
- Taylor, J. B., S. R. Beach and N. Kontos (2017). “The therapeutic discharge: An approach to dealing with deceptive patients.” Gen Hosp Psychiatry 46: 74-78.
- Kontos, N., J. B. Taylor and S. R. Beach (2018). “The therapeutic discharge II: An approach to documentation in the setting of feigned suicidal ideation.” Gen Hosp Psychiatry 51: 30-35.
- Beach, S. R., et al. (2017). “Teaching Psychiatric Trainees to “Think Dirty”: Uncovering Hidden Motivations and Deception.” Psychosomatics 58(5): 474-482.

References

Amos, J. (2010). Managing factitious disorder and malingering. In E. b. Robinson, Psychosomatic Medicine: An Introduction to Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry (pp. 82-88). New York: Cambridge University Press.

Elmore, J. L. (2005). Munchausen Syndrome: An Endless Search for Self, Managed by House Arrest and Mandated Treatment. Annals of Emergency Medicine, 561-563.

Johnson, B. R. (2000). Suspected Munchausen’s Syndrome and Civil Commitment. J Am Acad Psychiatry Law, 74-76.

Schwarz, K. M., et al (1993). Hospital Management of a Patient With Intractable Factitious Disorder. Psychosomatics, 265.

Catatonia: A Special Case in Civil Commitment for Psychiatric Disorders

Dr. George Dawson had an outstanding blog post on New Year’s Eve, “The Rights Versus Treatment Debate.”

It reminded me of a special case of medical/psychiatric illness: Catatonia. Catatonia can lead to deadly consequences, which can lead to conflicts between psychiatrists and lawyers. Moreover, it can also affect insurance reimbursement, although I usually didn’t have to haggle with managed care entities about it.

For a brief, informal review of catatonia, refer to my post “Delirium and Catatonia: Medical Emergencies.”

It’s a complex neuromotor disorder that often comes on abruptly, often as a complication of a mental disorder such as major depression or bipolar disorder (manic-depressive illness). It can also appear in the context of medical illness as well, or as an adverse event linked to a certain class of medications known as antipsychotics. The latter is called Neuroleptic Malignant Syndrome (NMS). The syndrome is marked by a number of behavioral abnormalities, including but not limited to the following:

Being mute or simply repeating what is said

Being immobile or displaying purposeless agitation

Displaying motor abnormalities that include the tendency to maintain very uncomfortable postures for long periods of times, called “waxy flexibility”.

Among the medical complications of the disorder are deep vein thromboses (blood clots which can travel to the lungs), dehydration due to inability to eat or drink, kidney failure from the breakdown of muscle tissue in the body, and respiratory failure requiring ventilator support and tracheostomy. Morbidity and mortality are high, especially if the preferred treatment is not administered quickly.

The point is that patients with catatonia can be a danger to themselves and trigger requests by psychiatrists for involuntary orders for psychiatric hospitalization to ensure their safety. Because the behavior of such patients is often bizarre, abrupt, and fluctuating, it can lead to hesitation by lawyers and judges to seek commitments to locked psychiatric units. There is often disagreement about how to treat them.

As a consultation-liaison psychiatrist (CL-P) I often encountered catatonia in the general hospital. I was often called urgently because patients stopped talking, eating, and moving. Sometimes they assumed bizarre postures. One is the pillow effect. The patient lies in bed with his head just above the pillow, often for long periods of time—which looks strange and uncomfortable.

While benzodiazepines (often injectable) can “break” the catatonic spell, the effect can be transitory despite initially looking like a miraculous cure. Often the treatment of choice is electroconvulsive therapy (ECT). There can be resistance to applying this treatment because of stigma around the intervention itself and concern that an underlying medical condition might be the cause of catatonia. It might not make sense to some lawyers that a “psychiatric treatment” could stop the manifestation of a medical illness. Another complication is that some of these patients need a combination of medical support and psychiatric treatment which in some cases might best be carried out in a medical-psychiatry unit. This is a specialized ward which is not available in many hospitals, but offers both acute medical and acute psychiatric care.

Catatonia, whether it’s because of psychiatric or medical causes is an emergency, and a potentially life-threatening condition. As I mentioned, the treatment of choice happens to be electroconvulsive therapy (ECT). Depending on the state code, physicians are often faced with navigating a confusing set of legal opinions about how ECT can be applied in order to satisfy the legal requirements of the mental health code. This can prolong the time it takes to apply ECT and often time is of the essence. The longer it takes to satisfy the legal requirement (civil commitment or establishment of legal guardianship), the higher the risk for medical complications or death from catatonia.

A typical case representative of the issue starts with a patient who presents to physicians with the catatonic syndrome. Because the medical complications can be a compelling simultaneous comorbid factor along with the psychiatric antecedents, or because they can be the major presenting problem in the case of NMS, attention is often drawn to those initially.

What seems to follow is an effort to conceptualize the syndrome as being a consequence of either a medical or a psychiatric disorder. This may be the source of the differing legal interpretations of how to apply ECT. In both cases, the patient is unable to consent for the procedure. Some attorneys and judges, dependent on the jurisdiction, will tell psychiatrists and other physicians that they can proceed with ECT without a commitment order, and that all that is really needed is next-of-kin consent.

Other legal authorities may restrict this permission to situations in which NMS occurs, mainly because it has all the attributes of a serious medical illness which requires emergency treatment. Other authorities extend permission to treat catatonia on an involuntary basis when the syndrome is not due to medications or medical illness but due to psychiatric illness if a commitment process is in progress, but no order for commitment is yet rendered.

Still other authorities insist that both next-of-kin consent and a commitment order are necessary. Add to this the alternative requirement that permission for ECT could be granted by someone with legal guardianship (or in some cases, Durable Power of Attorney for Health Care Decisions), either given by an emergency legal process for the express purpose of getting permission to apply ECT or previously ordered by the court—and the procedural requirements could then become a paralyzing morass of restrictions that delays emergency care of the patient.

The differences in interpretation of some state codes regarding mental health commitments and the dualistic way in which physicians and legal professionals tend to think about catatonia, i.e., “is it medical or is it psychiatric?”, may be two factors that contribute to the logistical difficulties we often encounter trying to treat the condition. The stigma surrounding mental illness and ECT is probably another factor.

When emergency treatment requiring a medical procedure for a more typical medical illness (such as acute coronary syndrome or ACS) is needed, the treatment would typically be done immediately. When emergency treatment for catatonia is requested, legal procedures can go on for many days—while the patient and family suffer. Yet the risk for harm from some invasive emergency treatments for ACS may be significantly higher than the risk for harm from ECT for catatonia. The risk of dying from the complications of catatonia can be very high when ECT is delayed by only a few days. But delays longer than that are not unusual. Many would be outraged at a two-week delay in performing a cardiac catheterization.

If we avoid dichotomizing catatonia as either medical or psychiatric, and instead think of it as a life-threatening emergency for which an effective treatment is available, would that help patients get more prompt access to the intervention? And if that were done, could some state mental health codes change in any way to reflect the change in our conceptualization?

The argument probably is not that simple. The issue of what to do if the patient refuses treatment after treatments have begun once she is able to express a choice remains. Administering ECT for a patient who is unresponsive and who may die without it is not as problematic as deciding how to continue the treatments once the patient begins responding to ECT. Based on the respect for the principle of autonomy, in some jurisdictions current practice and statute prohibit continuing ECT without a court order or court-appointed guardian’s permission if the patient becomes alert during the course of ECT and states a preference not to undergo further treatments. Under some laws, if the patient simply states this preference, she is presumed to retain decisional capacity.

The clinician has few choices: find an alternative treatment the patient will accept voluntarily, seek court commitment, or have a guardian appointed who can decide on the patient’s behalf. The patient’s clinical condition will, in some cases, guide the decision. If the catatonia has completely resolved, meaning a sustained recovery has occurred (although the definition of “sustained” can certainly be debated), it may not be necessary to insist on further ECT. If the catatonia has not resolved, the clinician will need to demonstrate that a decisional capacity assessment reveals that the patient, in fact, lacks capacity regarding the issue of the need for continuing treatment of catatonia.

The aforementioned factor of how to address the change in the patient’s willingness to continue ECT may be one of the reasons why some jurisdictions insist on having a commitment in place prior to starting the treatments in the first place. It may ensure the ability to continue the treatments when needed without a gap in time that may lead to deterioration in the patient’s condition—at the expense of up-front delays in order to get the legal groundwork laid.

Ironically, the up-front delays may in fact lead to the very deterioration in the patient’s condition all stakeholders wish to avoid. Current treatment guidelines indicate early intervention with ECT is recommended for malignant or excited-delirious forms of catatonia. They also point out that those with chronic catatonia usually fail to respond as quickly or as completely to ECT, arguing for “early diagnosis and appropriate intervention” (Bhati, Datto et al. 2007).

If physicians and attorneys could agree on the principle above, then a mechanism for allowing emergency ECT for these patients may be conceivable. It could combine the strategies that authorities may disagree on. One scenario might be permitting emergency ECT on the authority of next-of-kin (NOK) decision alone initially, arguably when it would matter the most regarding the timing of the intervention. This strategy would allow for emergency ECT without making a distinction between medical or psychiatric causes of catatonia, since the morbidity and mortality often are virtually the same regardless of etiology. If the patient recovers completely after one or two treatments, and refuses further ECT, there may not be a reason to file for commitment since catatonia can resolve after very few treatments.

If the patient recovers full ability to respond and chooses to refuse further ECT, but there is reason to doubt she retains full decisional capacity to make rational choices about the treatment, it may be advisable to file for commitment. This would be more likely when the catatonia is due to a severe mood episode, which typically takes more than one or two ECT treatments to effect full resolution of symptoms.

These examples represent only a point of departure in the discussion. The “devil is in the details” to be sure. However, at the very least, these suggestions might allow enough of an intervention to “break” the catatonia early enough and long enough to interrupt what could be a relentless spiral into the life-threatening complications of catatonia.

Bhati MT, Datto CJ, O’Reardon JP. Clinical manifestations, diagnosis, and empirical treatments for catatonia. Psychiatry (Edgmont). 2007 Mar;4(3):46-52. PMID: 20805910; PMCID: PMC2922358.

Congratulations to Paul Thisayakorn, MD!

I got a wonderful holiday greeting from one of my favorite past residents, Paul Thisayakorn, MD. He’s running a top-notch Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry (CL-P) Service and a brand-new C-L Fellowship in Thailand. I could not be more excited for him and his family. His wife, Bow, runs the Palliative Care Service.

He and Bow answered our holiday greeting to them. In it I remarked about my brief episode of mild delirium immediately following my eye surgery for a detached retina and mentioned a nurse administering the CAM-ICU delirium screening test. One of the questions was “Will a stone float on water?” I answered it correctly, but joked in the greeting message that I said “Yes, but only if it really believes.”

His remark was priceless: “We actually did a CAM-ICU in the morning when I received this email from you. I told my fellow and residents about you and what you taught me how to be a practical psychosomaticist. They also learned about how stone floats on the water.”

Paul made an awesome contribution to the Academy of C-L Psychiatry knowledge base during the height of the Covid-19 Pandemic. Things were tough there for a long time. Paul tells me they are still practicing some elements of the Covid protocol. Thailand is gradually opening back up.

This is the second year for his C-L Psychiatry fellowship program at the Chulalongkorn Psychiatry Department. They graduated their first C-L fellow and there are now two other fellows in training.

Under Paul’s strong leadership, they’ve gathered a group of interested Thai psychiatrists and founded the Society of Thai Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry just this past October.

And he was given an assistant professor position at the university. Paul and his team are in the featured image at the top of this post. Paul’s the guy wearing glasses in the middle.

He’s not all work and no play, which is a wonderful thing. He jogs and meditates and he has the most beautiful family, two great kids growing fast and a wife who is both a devoted partner and the leader of the Palliative Care service.

As a teacher, I couldn’t ask for a better legacy. I still have the necktie with white elephants that he gave me as a gift. In Thai culture, the white elephant is a symbol of good fortune (among other things), which is what Paul was wishing for me. Of course, the feeling is mutual.

I wish Paul well in the coming new year. And to all those who read my blog, have a happy new year.

Dr. Donald Warne, MD, MPH to Deliver MLK Jr Distinguished Lecture January 18, 2023

The University of Iowa Hospitals & Clinics welcomes Donald Warne, MD, MPH, co-director of Johns Hopkins Center for Indigenous Health, on January 18, 2023 when he will deliver the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr Distinguished Lecture in the Prem Sahai Auditorium in Iowa City, Iowa.

University of Iowa Psychiatry Residents Get Shout Outs

Recently, University of Iowa psychiatry residents worked hard enough to get shout outs. One of them was exemplary performance on the consultation and emergency room service. The service was following over two dozen inpatients and received 15 consultation requests in a day. This is a staggering number and the resident on the service did the job without complaints. In addition, the resident was the only trainee on the service at the time. Other residents were working very hard as well.

This high level of performance is outstanding and raises questions about health care system level approaches to supporting it.

I read the abstract of a recently published study about Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) compared to medication in treating anxiety in adults (Hoge EA, Bui E, Mete M, Dutton MA, Baker AW, Simon NM. Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction vs Escitalopram for the Treatment of Adults With Anxiety Disorders: A Randomized Clinical Trial. JAMA Psychiatry. Published online November 09, 2022. doi:10.1001/jamapsychiatry.2022.3679).

On the day I read the abstract, I saw comments which were cringeworthy. The commenter is an outpatient psychiatrist in private practice who had some criticisms of the study. He thought the report of results at 8 weeks was inadequate because symptoms can recur soon after resolution.

Another problem he mentioned is worth quoting, “A course of treatment that requires as much time as the MBSR course described in the study would be out of the question for most of my patients, most of whom are overworked health care professionals who don’t have enough time to eat or sleep. Telling people who are that overworked they should spend 45 minutes a day meditating is the “Let them eat cake” of psychotherapy.”

That reminded me of a quote:

“You should sit in meditation for twenty minutes every day—unless you’re too busy; then you should sit for an hour.”
Zen Proverb

I know, I know; I should talk—I’m retired. Actually, I took part in an MBSR course about 8 years ago when I noticed that burnout was probably influencing my job performance on the psychiatry consultation service. I thought it was helpful and I still practice it. I was lucky enough to participate in the course after work hours. The hospital supported the course.

The residents who are being recognized for their hard work on extremely busy clinical services may or may not be at high risk for burnout. They are no doubt extra resilient and dedicated.

And the University of Iowa health care system may also be offering a high level of system support for them. I don’t see that University of Iowa Health Care is on the list of the American Medical Association (AMA) Joy in Medicine^TM Health System Recognition System, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t doing the kinds of things which would merit formal recognition.

Anyway, they all get my shout out.

Listen to Dr. Wes Ely, MD on Talk Radio Europe Discuss His Book: Every Deep-Drawn Breath

Listen to Dr. Wes Ely on the show Talk Radio Europe as he talks about the devastating consequences of severe disease that results in admission to critical care units, specifically in the context of the Covid-19 Pandemic.

The title of the presentation is “Understanding the Long Shadow of COVID and ICU Care.”

Rounding@Iowa Presentation on Covid-19 Bivalent Vaccine Boosters

Give a listen to the Rounding@Iowa presentation “Update on Covid-19 Bivalent Vaccine Boosters. While these presentations are mainly directed to health care providers, they are very helpful for members of the community at large.

CDC Weekly U.S. Influenza Surveillance Report

See the CDC Weekly U.S. Influenza Surveillance Report as of the last week of October, 2022. While Iowa’s activity is listed as “minimal,” the Iowa Dept. of Public Health points out that individual cases are not reportable in Iowa. The best way to prevent influenza is to get the flu vaccine.