Mark T. Hegel, Ph.D. of the psychiatry department and the Norris Cotton Cancer Center at Dartmouth Medical School recently conducted a study showing that almost half of newly diagnosed breast cancer patients are afflicted by significant emotional distress or symptoms of psychiatric disorders before treatment. Hegel and his colleagues screened 236 women faced with breast cancer diagnosis and assessed the patients' emotional and mental health. All of the women reported that their new diagnosis was a source of stress, and this stress was significant enough in almost half the women to possibly merit treatment. Roughly one-tenth of the women showed symptoms of major depression, and another 10 percent had symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. Because the symptoms of emotional stress often become even worse after treatment begins, Hegel suggests assessing the mental health of more cancer patients.
Nancy Formella, a registered nurse at the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, is currently the acting president of Mary Hitchcock Memorial Hospital. According to Dr. Douglas Klegon of the American Hospital Association, only 137 hospitals out of over 6,000 hospitals in the United States have registered nurses as chief executive officers. Formella is filling in for the recently retired CEO Jim Varnum, who had lead the hospital for almost 30 years. She will hold this position until the board of trustees completes a reorganization plan for the complex and recruits the next permanent president. Formella, who came to DHMC in 1999 as a senior nurse executive, received the Nurse Leader of the Year Award from the New Hampshire Nurses' Association in 2004 and the Nursing Management Excellence Award from the New Hampshire Organization of Nurse Leaders in 2005.
A recently published study in the Academy of Management Perspectives journal estimates that, in 2010, women will only account for 6 percent of the chief executive officers in the 1,000 largest firms in the country. The study was co-authored by Constance Helfat, a technology and strategy professor at the Tuck School of Business. Helfat and her colleagues studied companies on the Fortune 1000 and found that nearly half of these firms had no women in their official listings of principal executives. The study, which involved six years of analysis of over 10,000 executives, also found that those companies that did include females in top positions typically had only one or two. While women represent nearly 12 percent of executive committee members, the gender balance on executive boards is still very skewed.
