Search for tag: "stand"

Announcer: "Health Hacks" with Dr. Troy Madsen on The Scope.

Dr. Madsen: Today's health hack is standing at work. It's something simple. You've probably heard about it before. There are all sorts of problems associated with sitting at work causing potentially even more health problems than things like obesity and smoking. But just sitting at work for prolonged periods can have a very significant effect on your health.

So the health hack is standing at work. If you've noticed problems at work, such as anxiety, just lack of engagement with work, even issues with sickness, missing work, standing has been shown to make a big difference.

The health hack is to do something very simple to remind yourself to stand. My recommendation is set the timer on your phone for 30 minutes. Set it, hit start when you sit down. When it goes off, reset it, hit start again. When it goes off, stand up, walk around. Go get a drink of water. Go use the restroom. Just stand and work. Anything like that so you're not sitting for prolonged periods.

I think anything where you're just not seated for prolonged periods. And I would say if you can just get up and walk, that's probably better than just standing. But anything to do to get out of your seat and have that consistent reminder to do it. You're going to get in the habit of it probably after a week or two. You won't even need the reminder. You'll know 30 minutes, I stand. I walk around. I'm used to it. It makes me feel good.

Announcer: For more health hacks, check out thescoperadio.com. Produced by University of Utah Health.

I don't know that we've ever, in the course of human history, designed anything that was perfect and could last forever. We need to be ready for change.

As the old joke goes, people will say, "Change is good. You go first." What I see being different now is the people not only acknowledge that change is important and it's good, but more and more of them are willing to go first.

I see groups of institutions forming coalitions that will work on big change, transformational efforts, in their own institution. When that starts to happen, it will ripple throughout academic medicine, and healthcare in general.

The issue isn't competing against each other. The issue is we all have very similar mission statements. We want to improve the health of the public, and that's a big challenge.

Sadly, in many ways, the U.S. healthcare system is broken. We have great medicine. We have great surgeries, great medications and tests. But the system isn't working. And so, more and more what I see the people at this meeting thinking about isn't, "Where do I stand relative to anybody else," but, "Are we innovating? Are we changing ourselves in a way that we really can start to improve the health of the country."

We bring together people from all parts of the medical school, research, teaching, the administration, together with the health system. It's a place where the community really can come together and share ideas. I would argue there's never been a time when we need more new ideas to help us meet the challenges we face.

People who are coming to this meeting are going to leave more ready to push for change, to exert leadership, to argue for innovation on their home campus. All boats will rise together, and eventually we will create a tipping point where I think people will look at academic medical centers in this country ten years from now and say, "We were in trouble when it came to healthcare, and they led the solution.”