We all know people who have suffered by trusting too much: scammed customers, jilted lovers, shunned friends. Indeed, most of us have been burned by misplaced trust. These personal and vicarious experiences lead us to believe that people are too trusting, often verging on gullibility.

In fact, we don’t trust enough.

Scholars analyzing the performance at a large technology firm examined the productivity in a 25-foot radius around their best performers and found that these workers did inspire better performance in coworkers - by 15 percent.

Poor workers impacted their neighbors also, and even more. While “positive spillover” translated into an estimated $1 million in additional annual profits, "negative spillover" from so-called toxic workers was even more pronounced—sometimes having twice the magnitude of impact on profits as positive spillover.

And toxic spillover happens fast. The good news for your team as that its effect dissipates almost immediately once that worker is either fired or relegated to the far physical reaches of the company.

In the novella The Death of Ivan Ilyich (1886), Leo Tolstoy presents a man who is shocked by suddenly realising that his death is inevitable. While we can easily appreciate that the diagnosis of a terminal illness came as an unpleasant surprise, how could he only then discover the fact of his mortality? But that is Ivan’s situation. Not only is it news to him, but he can’t fully take it in:

There are 15 million people living with cancer in just the United States and it is painful. The huge downside to CDC claiming that recreational fentanyl use is an opioid epidemic is that they have stigmatized legitimate pain patients and their care - and so cancer patients end up in Emergency Rooms suffering from pain, nausea, and shortness of breath.

Though cannabinoids in marijuana are touted by salespeople and supplement marketing as therapies for almost anything, anecdotes are not evidence, and the evidence from a meta-analysis of 83 studies (3,000 people) for six mental health conditions shows cannabinoids do not work. Not for depression, anxiety disorders, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), Tourette syndrome, post-traumatic stress disorder(PTSD), or psychosis. And since there are known risks of cannabinoids they may be doing harm.

A National Academy of Medicine report released today says that a third to a half of physicians and nurses say they feel burned out, and that is even higher for medical students and residents at nearly 60 percent.

That could obviously affect patient care and, with lawyers waiting in the wings to sue, health care costs. 

The report says key issues will be:

Tackling clinician burnout early in professional development.

Fixing electronic health care record systems that increase frustration and stress.

Lowering administrative burdens and distracting clinicians from the care of patients.