Swearing at work's bleeping good for you
LONDON, UK — Using foul language at work boosts team spirit and helps staff feel better, says a study in the latest issue of the Leadership and Organisational Development Journal — as long as it's not abusive. So docs take heed: reprimanding staff for swearing might be strong leadership, but it could hinder bonding between staffers, lead author Yehud Baruch told AFP.

Sleep-deprived surgeons are as good as rested ones
QUEBEC CITY — Heart surgeons who get less than six hours of sleep perform just as well during surgeries as those who are fully rested, according to a study presented October 22 at the Canadian Cardiovascular Congress in Quebec City. But that may simply be due to good teamwork, lead author Dr Micheal Chu speculates — if one surgeon is not performing at 100%, other members of the surgical team compensate, he says.

Business Mentor program for immigrants turns sour
HALIFAX — When Dr Ali Shirazi, an Iranian plastic surgeon, signed up for Nova Scotia's Business Mentor Program, he was promised valuable work experience. Instead, he ended up working at a car dealership and saw his $130,000 participant fee go up in fumes. The government program, intended to help immigrant professionals get on the fast-track to citizenship and gain work experience, has now been canned and $60 million will be refunded to the 600 participants who signed up but hadn't started yet. Over 200 others who completed the program, including Dr Shirazi, won't be reimbursed.

Medical office romances flourish in fiction
DUBLIN — Doctors who have office flings are so cliché, according to a new study by Dr Brendan D Kelly in the October 27 Lancet. He studied 20 medically themed romance novels. "There was a marked preponderance of brilliant, tall, muscular, male doctors with chiselled features, working in emergency medicine; they were commonly of Mediterranean origin and had personal tragedies in their pasts," he found. "These novels suggest that there is an urgent need to include instruction in the arts of romance in training programmes for doctors and nurses."

Big Pharma logs on to Sermo
CAMBRIDGE, MA — Pfizer recently joined forces with Sermo — a sort of Facebook for physicians which is still inaccessible in Canada — to improve communications with the website's 31,000 member doctors and get access to their opinions about drugs. The money, the amount of which is undisclosed, will support Sermo's financial promotions: for instance, Sermo pays $100 per high-quality message and $20 if you add your opinion to an existing one.