Abstract PurposeThe success of any organization is highly dependent on how it attracts, recruits, motivates, and retains a high‐performing workforce. The reason is that performance as a phenomenon is closely related to aspects of effectiveness, knowledge management and quality from one side and to management, financing and development of the organization from the other. Especially for hospital physicians, job performance issues are inextricably linked to patient safety. Explaining the factors that influence employee performance remain a fundamental question for human resources management practitioners. The literature shows that a large number of factors influence job performance such as satisfaction from the profession, work environment, compensation policies, quality of work life, ability, effort, motivation, attitude, personality, and competence. This study looked at selected employee related factors, namely job security, organizational support, and job satisfaction. The purpose of this study is to examine the effect of job security and organizational support on hospital physician's job performance and the mediating role of job satisfaction on these relationships.MethodsA cross‐sectional quantitative approach was employed for this study. Hospital physicians working in public and private hospitals of Pakistan were selected. The sample comprised of 361 hospital physicians who were approached using the self‐administered technique. To outline and explain the relationship of job security and organizational support with job performance and how job satisfaction could mediate these relationship, the data were analyzed using partial least squares‐structural equation model (PLS‐SEM).ResultsThe results indicated that job security and organizational support positively affected job performance of hospital physicians. Moreover, job satisfaction mediated the link between job security and job performance as well as between organizational support and job performance.ConclusionsWe conclude that by providing job security and organizational support to hospital physicians, their job performance can be boosted. Physician satisfaction impacts physician behavior and, consequently, the quality of medical care. Physician satisfaction needs to be measured and monitored to improve working conditions and increase employment stability in the healthcare sector. Due to the health workforce crisis, knowledge regarding physician satisfaction and job security is essential to healthcare managers and policy makers for more effective human resources management.

Abstract The challenge of managing work and nonwork domains is an omnipresent experience for the employed workforce that has meaningful links to psychological, physical, and behavioral health. Work‐life conflict can create tension‐based strain and deplete resources, in turn interfering directly or indirectly with health. In this review, we summarize the empirical literature on work‐life conflict, and the more frequently studied and specific construct of work‐family conflict, as it pertains to employee health. Over three decades of literature inform this review, with more attention devoted to publications from the last 5 years. Trends and gaps in the current literature are identified.

Abstract Studies of psychological morbidity and quality of life in ovarian cancer (OC) patients have largely relied on self‐report measures despite substantial research questioning the confounding effects of denial and self‐deception in self‐report scores. This study investigated the use of the Early Memory Index (EMI) for detection of psychological distress among OC patients. Early Memory Index outcomes of 77 OC outpatients were compared with high and low distress scores on the Center for Epidemiological Studies‐Depression (CES‐D) and State‐Trait Anxiety Inventory Form‐Y (STAI‐S, STAI‐T). A higher percentage of participants scored as distressed on the EMI (51%) than the CES‐D (30%), STAI‐S (16%), and STAI‐T (21%). A sizable percentage (up to 48%) of low distress respondents on self‐report measures demonstrated illusory mental health on the EMI. Results support earlier research demonstrating self‐report scales’ limitation detecting psychological distress and the possibility of the EMI as an alternative screening measure of psychological adjustment in OC patients.

Evidence indicates that our relationships with coworkers and supervisors significantly influence our health and well‐being. The field of workplace health promotion—historically and currently—either ignores or fails to leverage insights from this evidence. In ways similar to individuals who look for a “magic pill” or diet to fix a health problem, employers also seek quick, external answers to health problems in their workforce. The current paper describes the development of an integral model to guide employers, researchers, and consultants in health promotion efforts. The paper is divided into three parts, from a broad perspective (Part 1) to the development of the model (Part 2) to providing specific empirical examples of the model in action (Part 3). Part 1 explains why integrative efforts are necessary and how they can work. Part 2 describes features of the model and shows how they are currently being utilized by employers but without integration. Part 3 reviews empirical interventions developed by my colleagues and I over the past 20 years. These are designed to impact one of five leverage points in work settings: leadership development; team training; well‐being champions; climate assessments and surveys; and linking employee assistance (EAP) and wellness services.

Pain is an essential physiological defense against danger, be it external, from the environment, or internal, arising from within the body. The initiation of this acute defensive pain is driven by activation in the periphery of the terminals of high threshold nociceptor sensory neurons by intense or irritant noxious stimuli and comprises both the distinct unpleasant sensation of pain and protective motor responses. Clinical pain, is though, very different from the immediate detection of and reaction to noxious stimuli, it includes ongoing pain and development of pain hypersensitivity in the presence of tissue damage, after nerve injury and in some cases, in the absence of any peripheral pathology. In all these situations, a prominent feature and sometimes prime driver of the pain, is an altered modulation of pain processing within the central nervous system, an amplification consequent on increased excitability and/or reduced inhibition in specific neural networks, which constitute the phenomenon of central sensitization. Recognition of the importance of central sensitization for the maintenance and manifestation of clinical pain states has led to an appreciation that such pain typically is an expression of an altered/disease state of nociceptive circuits in the central nervous system, one triggered but not necessarily sustained by peripheral injury, rather than only a symptom of some ongoing peripheral pathology, and treatment needs to be targeted accordingly.

Nurses play a critically important role in health care delivery as caregivers, patient advocates, managers of care, and decision‐makers, who use critical thinking‐skills in order to come up with the best outcomes for patients, as well as helping the patients’ families through tough health challenges. Their varying roles as dependable counselors, comforters, confidants, and great listeners are a big part of the reason why nurses are so vital in the health care system. Indeed, polls conducted by the Gallup Organization consistently list nursing as one of the nation's most trusted professions. However, many nurses pay a huge price for their service. Indeed, research shows that, on average, nurses are less healthy than the general public. They are more likely to be overweight, have higher levels of stress, and get less sleep. The heavy lifting required on the job makes nurses seven times more susceptible to musculoskeletal injuries like back pain, an ailment that afflicts large numbers of Americans.

This study investigated the effect of residual arousal on perceived positive and negative emotion, and the relationship between the valence of emotion and cardiovascular and cardiorespiratory reactivity. A total of 74 participants were randomly assigned to either a Residual Arousal (exercise‐induced) group or a No Residual Arousal (no exercise) group. Following the arousal manipulation, participants watched a video that elicited positive emotion and a video that elicited negative emotion. Within‐person differences revealed greater discrepancies between participants’ reports of positive and negative emotions in response to the videos, indicating that residual arousal caused stronger positive and negative emotions. With regard to physiological reactivity, participants in the No Residual Arousal group exhibited lower heart rate, respiration amplitude, and heart rate variability (LF/HF ratio) during the negative video than during the positive video, suggesting that the positive and negative videos had different influences on physiology. These results support the hypothesis that autonomic activation may be nonspecific with regard to the genesis of emotion, but once a person becomes emotional, physiological reactivity may differ between emotions.

Fibromyalgia (FM) is typically associated with the experience of diffuse pain and physical impairment. Depression also commonly co-exists in patients with FM, and has been correlated with pain intensity and physical functioning. Previous research suggests an association between pain intensity and physical functioning; however, the direct causal relationship between improvements in pain intensity and in functioning is not observed in many FM patients. This may suggest that another factor such as depression is mediating this relationship. The present work examined mediating role of depression. 216 patients with FM completed measures of pain intensity, depression, and physical function as part of a larger longitudinal study. Assessments were completed at baseline, 12, 24, and 36 weeks. Longitudinal mediational analyses indicated that depression is a partial mediator of the relationship between pain intensity and physical functioning at all four assessment points. Beta coefficients for the path from pain to physical functioning ranged from 0.18 - 0.36, with attenuated path coefficients ranging from 0.03 - 0.08, still showing significant but decreased associations when depression was added as a mediator. Clinical implication includes the importance of treating co-morbid depression in patients with fibromyalgia early in the course of treatment to prevent engagement in the cycle of disability.