Tag Archives: #TuracozHealthcareSolutions

Maintaining Work-Life Balance for Healthy and Fulfilling Life

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People have argued about the concept of “Work-Life Balance” for decades and it implies something distinctive to everybody. Some might think that the balance is achieved when they can leave work early enough to eat dinner with family. While others might view it as having a flexible schedule, so that they can incorporate their other interests along with work like studying part-time. Yet some others might feel fulfilled spending their “free” time progressing their career.

‘Work-life balance’ is the term used to describe the balance that an individual need between time allocated for work and other aspects of life. The saying goes that ‘All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy’.

Achieving Optimal Work-Life Balance

It can be challenging to attain a great work-life balance, particularly when organizations downsize, and individuals are anticipated to take on additional assignments, or when your obligations at domestic front conflict with those at work.

The methodologies underneath can assist you achieve a balance. A few of them may suit you way better than others, so choose the ones you think will work best for you.

Here are a few ways to improve your work-life balance:

1. Work-Life Balance does not mean an equal balance, there is no ‘perfect’ balance.

When we hear “work-life balance,” we probably envision waking up early, going for work-out, getting meal, heading off to work, have lunch, come home early, cook dinner, and retiring to bed by 9 PM with a nice book and going off to sleep by 10 PM. however, that’s often not the case.

Trying to schedule equal number of hours for work and personal activities is usually unrewarding and unrealistic. Life is and ought to be more fluid than that. We should not strive for the perfect schedule but, for a realistic one. Some days, you might focus more on work, while other days you might have more time and energy to pursue your hobbies or relax with your loved ones. Balance is achieved over time and not every day.

2. Be productive at work

The more productive and efficient you are at work, the simpler it is for you to go home at a sensible time.

Make sure you like your job. If you hate what you are doing, you aren’t going to be happy and content. You don’t have to love every aspect of your work, but it needs to be exciting enough that you don’t fear getting out of bed every single morning.

3. Prioritize your health.

Prioritizing your health, will make you a better employee and individual in true sense. Your overall wellbeing should be your fundamental concern. In the event you’ve been struggling with anxiety or depression and you think any treatment would benefit you, fit those sessions into your schedule, even if you need to leave work early or take time off from other activities.

4. Flexibility

Flexibility plays a vital role in maintaining a good work-life balance. Research has shown that people who believe they have flexible jobs look more favorably on their work-life balance than those with the same workload but with no perceived flexibility. It also found that team members who think their jobs are flexible do longer hours before their workload has a negative effect on them.

Another research came to similar conclusions: you are more likely to stay and feel satisfied in your job if you have access to flexible working arrangements.

Ask your boss to permit more flexibility in your schedule. Perhaps, you could work from home occasionally, come in and leave early, or have some flexibility with your working hours. Job sharing, when two people split the responsibilities of one role, is another well-known option.

5. Finding time for yourself

Work-life balance means having time for yourself as well. While your work is important, it shouldn’t be your whole life. You should prioritize work, activities or hobbies that make you happy.

The people and the work that you love deserve your best, and you can only give it when you stay healthy and look after yourself.

To bring more balance in your life, review how you spend your time, identify and eliminate low-value tasks and try to put more efforts on activities that you believe will make difference. Be flexible and add flexibility to your schedule. Discover the reason and fulfillment in whatever work you do.

Turacoz Healthcare Solutions understands the significance and importance of maintaining a perfect work-life balance and supports its each employee to ensure that they stay stress-free and enjoy their work without their personal lives being hampered. We also urge every working individual to take charge in achieving the same. Let us all pledge to bring in the perfect blend of personal and professional life.

Desktop Yoga: Don’t just sit there! Start Yoga

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With the years passing, International Yoga Day, has received super positive response from people from all walks of life.
Yoga, introduced to the world by India, was developed in ancient India. Current Indian Prime Minister Mr. Narendra Modi actively performs Yoga and encourages people to take it up. Each year on International Yoga Day, he performs Yoga himself amongst thousands of Indian citizens.

With our lives getting increasingly busy, we hardly find time to devote to our health which leads to increasing health issues. Yoga helps us to relax and rejuvenate and improve our health in the long run.

Current lifestyle of corporate personnels forces everyone to be at their desk for 8-12 hours a day. This sedentary lifestyle among office-goers takes a huge toll on the respective physical health.

How our bodies get affected?
Constantly glaring at the computer screens while sitting might seem normal but alas! For our bodies it is different. Being a couch potato doesn’t help at all. By constantly being seated in the office chair or couch:

  • Our risk of getting a heart disease increases by 64%.
  • We can become prone to specific types of cancer.
  • We are technically wasting 7 precious years of your life.

So, in simple words, sitting is bumping us off.

What must be done?
Not going to office is not the solution. Then what? If we go to office, we need to sit. But worry not, Turacoz Healthcare Solutions lists out a logical and practical way to help you cope with the issue.

While we cannot convert your office seat to a gym, we can do something light yet effective for our body to keep it healthy. Let us all benefit from “DESKTOP YOGA”.

What is DESKTOP YOGA?
Desktop Yoga is simply a string of easy-to-perform exercises based on traditional yoga and are crafted particularly for the community of working people.

These exercises not only helps our body to relax but also re-energizes us helping us to focus better. It’s also appropriate for people who don’t want to put in much effort and exercise. We can perform desktop yoga easily while sitting on your office chair and ensure towards minimizing your stress.

Desktop yoga spots the muscles that are usually affected while we sit for prolonged hours. It is body part specific, so it is up to us in terms of duration in which we want to practice it.

We, at Turacoz HealthCare Solutions practice Desktop Yoga and aim to spread awareness regarding it thus promoting its practice. For us, the well-being of our employees is of primary concern and we sincerely believe that only a fit and healthy employee can perform at his true and best potential.

The following images depicts the different steps and types of “DESKTOP YOGA”

Desktop yoga

Along with performing these basic exercises, we must also follow few basic but golden tips to stay fit and healthy, both physically and mentally:

  • Must eat healthy food, avoid junk
  • Avoid sitting in one position for too long. We must stand up and take a walk and stretch our body at regular intervals
  • Avoid looking at the screen for elongated hours, must blink frequently to keep our eyes moist.
  • Avoid stress as much as possible and take interest in various hobbies
  • Practice meditation and
  • Stay positive and happy

Turacoz Healthcare Solutions wishes everyone a very happy International Yoga Day and urges all to opt for a healthy and happy lifestyle. STAY FIT, STAY HIT.

Transparency in Scholarly Publishing

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A research publication is considered as the highest-level medium of dissemination of research findings. Scholarly publications play an important role in disseminating findings, thoughts, and analysis to the scientific, academic, and lay communities. Transparency is an ethic that strengthens the credibility and integrity of research work as well as bonding among the scholarly communities. Due to frequent questioning on research credibility, pressure for open access by governments, and high incidences of research frauds, it has become important to form and follow the principles of transparency.

Principles of Transparency

The Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association (OASPA), and the World Association of Medical Editors (WAME) together have structured the principles of transparency, discuss all aspects of publication ethics and formulate the best practices to overcome any issue in this regard. The various principles of transparency and best practice in scholarly publishing are described as under:

These principle also help in differentiating the legitimate journals and publishers from the non-legitimate ones.

As per transparency, the scholars should give an access to the research data and methods employed for deriving the conclusion. The data production methods should be shared in a much wider platform. If scholar’s research is based on another researcher’s data, he or she should always cite their data clearly. The rules of data confidentiality, wherever applicable should be followed ethically.

Both the perspectives of transparency, viz. transparency in policy context and transparency in research process should be followed to make the scholarly publishing stronger and more reliable.

Publication plan carrying complete information about all types of publications or articles to be formed from the research or clinical studies also contributes towards ethical practice. A proper and firm publication planning can help researchers follow appropriate publishing practices, in time publication of research and hence, increased transparency.

Turacoz Healthcare Solutions (THS) provides end-to-end medical publication writing support including scholarly or academic publication, research publication, manuscripts, slide deck as well as regulatory writing support for clinical trials which includes Prescribing Information (PI), Investigator Brochures (IBs), Protocols, Clinical Study Reports (CSRs), Clinical Evaluation Reposts (CERs) and Common Technical Documents (CTDs). Our documents are guideline compliant and are as per the current pharma and the healthcare standards. We aim to extend our services to different domains of the industry around the globe.

‘World No Tobacco Day’ (31st May 2018): Tobacco and Heart Disease.

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World No Tobacco Day (WNTD) is celebrated every year on 31st May, since its beginning in 1988. The main aim to mark this day is to encourage a 24-hour period of abstinence from all forms of tobacco consumption around the world. It also aims to spread awareness about the widespread prevalence of tobacco use and the health risks associated with tobacco consumption. The resolution to celebrate 31 May as WNTD was passed by the World Health Assembly (WHA) in 1998 (WHA40.38). The World Health Organization (WHO) has continuously supported WNTD, every year for this campaign and decides on a theme for the day to create a more unified global message. The global theme for WNTD 2018 is – “Tobacco and Heart disease”. The theme focuses on the association between tobacco consumption and cardiovascular health and aims to inculcate the sense of refraining from tobacco use among general people.

Tobacco contains nicotine, a drug classified as potent parasympathomimetic stimulant. Nicotine is a poisonous alkaloid of the plant genus Nicotiana (family Solanaceae). The WHO declared tobacco as the world’s single greatest preventable cause of death in 2008.

Tobacco use is an important risk factor for the development of various diseases such as cancers (lung, blood, kidney, bladder, brain etc.), respiratory diseases, cardiovascular diseases (CVDs), coronary heart disease (CHD), stroke, peripheral vascular disease, pregnancy complications etc.

Key Facts from 2017 World Tobacco Reports

  • Worldwide, each year tobacco causes nearly 6 million deaths, and current trends show that tobacco use lead to more than 8 million deaths annually by 2030.
  • Almost every child regularly breathe air polluted by tobacco smoke in public places.
  • As per the WHO’s, Global Health Observatory (GHO) data 2016, 40% of children are exposed to second-hand tobacco smoke, accounting for over 600,000 deaths per year. Close to a third of those deaths were reported in children under the age of five and two-thirds were in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) and South Asia.
  • In 2011, tobacco caused one-tenth of CVDs worldwide. About 12% of all heart disease deaths are due to the use of tobacco and second-hand smoke.
  • After high blood pressure, tobacco use is the second leading cause of CVD.

Aim of the World No Tobacco Day 2018

  • Highlighting the connection between the use of tobacco products and CVDs.
  • Increasing awareness within the masses to refrain from tobacco use and resist exposure to second-hand smoke to improve their cardiovascular health.
  • Promoting heart health by feasible government actions and public measures that can help to reduce the risks to heart health posed by tobacco.
  • Encouraging countries to include tobacco control in their national agenda.

Turacoz healthcare solutions, aims to increase awareness about the negative health impact of tobacco consumption and motivate them to refrain from the use of tobacco products. We must all join hands and raise our voice against both active and passive smoking so that a brighter and healthier future can be ensured for our younger generation and our Nation. Turacoz is a medical communications company, which offers services to healthcare professionals in clinical research, regulatory writing, publication writing, medico-marketing writing, and support for conducting medical advisory board meetings.

IMRAD in Original Research Articles

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IMRAD is nothing but the acronym used for the 4 basic sections of an original research article, namely Introduction, Methods, Results, and Discussion. Any original article must include these 4 essential parts. Diagrammatic representation of IMRAD is depicted in Figure 1. Each of these sections are designed to answer certain questions as described below.

Introduction – Why was the study carried out? What is the specific question to be answered? What is already known, and what is being sought? What is the specific objective?

Introduction must be written in present tense. It must start with broad topics and gradually narrow down to the precise study topic. Thus, this section must provide the background information, set the stage for the article, and build-up the reader’s interest. It must highlight how the study intends to fill-in the existing gaps and what it will add to the current knowledge that already exists.

                                                                                          Figure 1. Diagrammatic Representation of IMRAD

Methods – When, where, and how was the study conducted?

Methods must be written in past tense. This section must clearly describe how the study was designed and carried out, what was the sample, and how it was collected. Procedures conducted must be described comprehensively in a chronological order. The methods section must describe the outcomes being evaluated in the order of their relevance to the research question. Statistical analysis methods used must also be described here. Methods must be presented such that the process could be reproducible.

Results – What was found?

Results must be written in past tense. This is the most important part of any research article as it provides answers to the questions asked in introduction section. Results must be presented in a simple structured way so that they are easy to read and understand. Tables and figures must be included to present the results. If required, results can be organized in subsections. All outcomes must be reported in this section in the same order in which they have been mentioned in the methods section of the article. Results must be only reported in this section and not interpreted or discussed. Specific statistical data such as p-values must be included.

Discussion –

What do the results mean? How do the results compare with the existing published literature? What are the implications and future directions?

Discussion must be written in both present and past tense. Established knowledge must be written in past tense and discussion of current results must be written in present tense. This is the most difficult section to write as the author must put everything together in a comprehensive way and should attempt to draw conclusions from the results obtained. Results must be discussed here with an emphasis on the most significant observations. These observations must then be compared with previously published similar studies. Strengths and limitations of the study must be mentioned. Some speculative discussion can be included, which can serve as the source for future research.

Discussion section can be followed by conclusion section where the overall findings can be summarized succinctly.

We, at Turacoz Healthcare Solutions (THS), provide customized medical communication support. Our wing, Turacoz Skill Development Program (TSDP), provides training solutions in various forms to help the healthcare and pharma professionals improve their skills. Although medical writing is a skill and one gets better at it only by practice, equipping oneself with certain basic tools would be a very good start. Here, we share the basic concept of IMRAD in original research articles, which will help budding writers to understand the importance of following this structure while developing manuscripts.

 

World Down Syndrome Day – Let Them Be Heard!

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World Down Syndrome Day (WDSD) is a global awareness day which has been officially observed by the United Nations since 2012. Every year it is observed on 21 March with the same zeal and enthusiasm. On this day, people with Down syndrome and their close friends and acquaintances throughout the world organize and participate in events to raise public awareness.

Why the Date March 21?

The date for this day was selected being the 21st day of the 3rd month to signify the uniqueness of the triplication (trisomy) of the 21st chromosome which is the cause of Down syndrome.

Who Manages WDSD Platform?

The WDSD website is managed by the charity organization, Down Syndrome International (DSi). DSi created this platform as a single global meeting place where everyone can share their experiences, advertise their activities and participate in DSi’s WDSD initiatives. The website is a hub of activity taking place around 21 March each year. DSi, a global network of individuals and organizations from all over the world, is committed to improve the quality of life of people affected by Down syndrome and advocating their inherent right to be accepted.

What is the WDSD-Theme this year?

Each year DSi takes up a theme to champion the cause of Down syndrome. The theme for WDSD this year, My Voice, My Community, has been taken up to encourage people with Down syndrome, and their supporters to speak their mind, and let their voice influence government policy and action, to ensure that they can be included, on a full and equal basis with others, in all aspects of society.

What is Down Syndrome?

Down syndrome is a naturally occurring chromosomal arrangement that has always been a part of the human condition, being universally present across racial, gender or socioeconomic lines, and affecting approximately 1 in a few hundred live births, although there is considerable variation worldwide. Per an estimate given by the United Nations, the incidence of Down syndrome is between 1 in 1,000 to 1 in 1,100 live births worldwide. Down syndrome usually causes varying degrees of intellectual and physical disability and associated medical issues.

 

DSi encourages people all over the world to help raise awareness of what Down syndrome is, and how people affected with this disorder play a vital role in our lives and communities. Turacoz Healthcare Solutions, as a part of its corporate social responsibility, joins hands with DSi to raise awareness about Down syndrome and for the well-being of the affected people. Our aim is to communicate our concern and draw more people to be a part of this campaign for those who need our help.

Dehydration and Importance of Oral Rehydration Salts

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Introduction

Dehydration is a condition where free water loss exceeds free water intake. Around 2/3rd of the human body is composed of water, and helps in various functions such as lubrication of the joints and eyes,digestion, flushing out of wastes and toxins, and maintaining the balance of minerals (salts and sugar) in our body. Dehydration may occur due to exercise or diseases, high environmental temperature, not drinking enough fluids, persistent vomiting and diarrhea, sweating due to fever etc.

Causes for Dehydration

There are different conditions which may cause dehydration. Some of them are as follows:

  • Gastrointestinal: Diarrhea and vomiting due to gastroenteritis, cholera, yellow fever or infection of the gastrointestinal tract leads to dehydration as well as an electrolyte imbalance.
  • Sweating:Excessive sweating due to vigorous exercise, sports, fever, heavy manual work, climatic conditions etc. results in fluid loss and dehydration.
  • Alcohol intake: Alcohol is a diuretic and stimulates urination resulting in dehydration.
  • Diabetes: In diabetes, kidney removes extra glucose along with water, which in turn may result into dehydration.
  • Blood loss: Excessive loss of blood can also result in dehydration.

People can tolerate 3-4%decrease in total body water without any difficulty. But 5-8% decrease can cause fatigue and dizziness and above 8% can prove to be dangerous.

Signs and Symptoms

The early signs of dehydration include feeling thirsty and lightheaded, dry mouth,tiredness,having dark colored face, strong smell in urine, passing urine less often than usual etc.

Remedies and Treatments

  • Drink plenty of fluids such as water, squash or fruit juice and avoid caffeinated beverages and fizzy drinks.
  • In illnesses such as vomiting or diarrhea, it is difficult to maintain optimum water level in our body. In such cases, it is better to have small sips of water or other fluids.
  • Infants and children who are dehydrated or having diarrhea should be given oral rehydrated salts (ORS)as recommended by World Health Organization (WHO) instead of water.This is because water can dilute the already low levels of electrolytes and minerals in the body. ORS is a mixture of electrolytes and sugars mainly given to restore imbalance of body fluids. It is very helpful in adults suffering from dehydration, vomiting, and diarrhea.

Importance of ORS

  • ORS is a special combination of dry salts (electrolytes) that are mixed with water. It can help to replace the fluids lost due to diarrhea and vomiting.
  • ORS is important because it helps to rehydrate the body with essential electrolytes, especially sodium and potassium.
  • In severe case of dehydration, when fainting or unconsciousness occurs, ORS can be given through intravenous injections for replenishment of necessary electrolytes and water.
  • In mild dehydration, an oral rehydration can be given which is less painful, and less expensive as compared to ORS given through intravenous route.
  • ORS can be prepared at home by simply mixing 6 level teaspoons of sugar and 1/2 level teaspoon of salt in 1 liter of clean water.
  • ORS is the best treatment option for dehydration

Turacoz Healthcare Solutions is engaged in spreading awareness among people regarding any healthcare issues. We consider it our responsibility to create awareness about any health-related issues in the general public.