Happy April Fool’s Day!
Ischial bursitis is just a fancy way of saying “pain in the behind.” In other words, we mental health clinicians need to get off our behinds once in a while. Ha, ha!
P.S. Did you notice that the first author of this fictional study was “Dr. Sitting”? 🙂
Mental health clinicians are at higher risk of these medical conditions
A study published in the March 28, 2020, issue of JAMA Internal Medicine (Sitting et al., 2020) compared the physical health of 17 different medical specialties using data from three major health insurance databases. Mental health clinicians were statistically significantly more likely than other clinicians to suffer from several medical conditions including varicose veins (p < .001), ischial bursitis (p = .039), and deep vein thrombosis ( p = .033). There was also a trend towards a higher incidence in coronary artery disease in mental health clinicians, though the association was not statistically significant (p = .072).
Justin Sitting, MD, PhD, Associate Professor at Harvard Medical School, the lead author of the paper, said in an interview with JAMA TV that, while these findings are preliminary, they suggest that mental health clinicians may be at higher risk for certain medical conditions.
A preplanned subgroup analysis showed that the findings were statistically significantly significant only in outpatient mental health clinicians (p < .012 versus for inpatient mental health clinicians). There was also a statistically significant inverse correlation between the duration of the outpatient visits and the risk of varicose veins, ischial bursitis, and deep vein thrombosis (p < .01 for each), suggesting that the risks may be related to sitting for longer periods without getting up.
An accompanying Editorial suggested that, while more research is needed, outpatient mental health clinicians would be well advised to intermittently standing up during outpatient visits that last for longer than 15 minutes.
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