To coincide with National Nurses Week, the medical branch’s League City campus opened a “Zen room” Thursday to allow employees to unwind and unload their burnout and stress. “The overall goal of the Zen den was to create a dedicated space for clinical staff to go relax, recharge and to help reduce symptoms of burnout that are caused by the daily work they do,” said Christine Wade, hospital administrator.

International news outlets, including this one in Nigeria, continue to report on a comparative study published May 4 in The BMJ. Dr. Peter Cram, professor and chair of internal medicine at the University of Texas Medical Center at Galveston, is one of the authors. Infectious Disease Advisor also reported on this study.

Dr. Elena Volpi, director of the UTMB Sealy Center on Aging, wrote about researchers seeking volunteers who are women, 65 years and older and who recently have broken a hip and had surgical repair.

This feeling often is attributed to the release of endorphins, natural painkillers released by the body that are thought to create a general feeling of well-being. This is probably a myth though because endorphins cannot cross into the brain. Read more about it in Medical Discovery News.

Drs. Victor S. Sierpina and Michelle Sierpina encourage us to get our toes in the sand soon. “It should be no surprise that we benefit cognitively and psychologically from time away from daily stress,” they wrote in their column. See you on the beach.

Early anecdotes about Paxlovid’s effects on long COVID are intriguing, but no one’s testing them in clinical trials yet. Vineet Menachery, a coronavirus expert at the University of Texas Medical Branch, believes long-term infection is probably “more common than we think,” he told Katherine Wu.

American medical facilities typically have access to the latest healthcare technology and generally boast low readmission rates among heart attack patients. New research reports that America’s one-year heart attack death rate is one of the highest among studied high-income nations. Dr. Peter Cram, professor and chair of internal medicine at the University of Texas Medical Center at Galveston, was one of the research collaborators. “From a U.S. perspective, our heart attack care is good, but the one-year mortality rate is concerning,” Cram said. “If dying is one of the things we want to prevent, then we have work to do.” News Medical, All Health Books, World Health and Medical Economics also reported on this comparative studied published in The BMJ.