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Acute and chronic pain affects more Americans than heart disease, diabetes, and cancer combined. Conservative estimates suggest the total economic cost of pain in the United States is $600 billion, and more than half of this cost is due to lost productivity, such as absenteeism, presenteeism, and turnover. In addition, an escalating opioid epidemic in the United States and abroad spurred by a lack of safe and effective pain management has magnified challenges to address pain in the workforce, particularly the military. Thus, it is imperative to investigate the organizational antecedents and consequences of pain and prescription opioid misuse (POM). This chapter provides a brief introduction to pain processing and the biopsychosocial model of pain, emphasizing the relationship between stress, emotional well-being, and pain in the military workforce. We review personal and organizational risk and protective factors for pain, such as post-traumatic stress disorder, optimism, perceived organizational support, and job strain. Further, we discuss the potential adverse impact of pain on organizational outcomes, the rise of POM in military personnel, and risk factors for POM in civilian and military populations. Lastly, we propose potential organizational interventions to mitigate pain and provide the future directions for work, stress, and pain research.

Students with physical and health impairments represent a small but growing group of individuals with diverse educational needs. They are those students whose physical limitations or health problems interfere with school attendance or learning to such an extent that special services, training, equipment, materials, or facilities are required. Therefore, the purpose of this chapter is to discuss some of these impairments and acquaint both general and special educators with interventions for helping students with physical and health impairments succeed.

We review the conceptualization of quality of life (QOL) past and present, providing a new definition that transcends the traditional approach. We discuss the importance of QOL as a mandatory assessment in patient care and clinical trials, concurring with the need for disease-specific tools and focusing on a nerve fiber-specific tool for assessing impacts of diabetic neuropathies on QOL and activities of daily living (ADLs) used in multi-center clinical trials and translated into different languages. By relating neuropathic disabilities to different nerve fibers, the Norfolk Quality of Life – Diabetic Neuropathy (QOL-DN) is able to measure impacts of nerve-fiber-specific neurotrophic therapies, providing pertinent endpoints to changes in health status and QOL.

This chapter summarizes the knowledge on sleep and restitution. Sleep constitutes the recuperative process of the central nervous system. The use of the brain during wakefulness will lead to depletion of energy in the cortical areas locally responsible for activity. The level of depletion is monitored and sleep is initiated when critical levels are reached. The attempts to initiate sleep are perceived as sleepiness or fatigue. The ensuing sleep then actively restores brain physiology to normal levels. This also results in restored alertness, memory capacity, and mood. Also, peripheral anabolic processes (secretion of growth hormone and testosterone) are strongly enhanced and catabolic process (secretion of cortisol and catecholamines) are strongly suppressed. In the long run, reduced or impaired sleep leads to metabolic diseases, depression, burnout, and mortality. Stress and irregular hours are among the main causes of disturbed sleep.

Systems thinking calls for a shift of our mindset from seeing just parts to seeing the whole reality in its structured dynamic unity and interconnectedness. Systems thinking fosters a sensibility to see subtle connections between components and parts of reality, especially the free enterprise capitalist system (FECS). It enables us to see ourselves as active participants or partners of FECS and not mere induced factors of its production–distribution–consumption processes. Systems thinking seeks to identify the economic “structures” that underlie complex situations in FECS that bring about high versus low leveraged changes. A system is strengthened and reinforced by feedback of reciprocal exchanges that makes the system alive, transparent, human, and humanizing.

In Part I, we explore basic laws or patterns of behaviors as understood by systems thinking; in Part II we examine the basic archetypes or structured behaviors of systems thinking; in both parts we strive to see reality through the lens of critical thinking to help us understand patterns and structures of behavior among systems and their component parts. In conclusion, we argue for compatibility and complementarity of critical thinking and systems thinking to identify and resolve management problems created by our flawed thinking, and sedimented by our wanton assumptions, presumptions, suppositions and presuppositions, biases, and prejudices. Such thinking will also identify unnecessary economic and political structures of the self-serving policies we create, which imprison us.

The treatment and care of persons with a disability should and must be all encompassing. With the expansion of the knowledge that proper dieting can make a difference in the individual’s development and quality of life, attention must be focused on using proper food intake to remediate the negative impact of a disability. Food is related to proper healthcare; therefore, we must include proper nutrition in working with learners with exceptionalities. We must add to the list of treatments not only educational intervention, social interaction, and independent living, but also food intake. This chapter looks at the dietary needs of several disabling conditions, and addresses how particular dietary food selections help in their development and their ability to learn integration, playing skills with others, and working independently when called on to do so. Therefore, for the purposes of this chapter, we focus on exceptionalities such as cognitive disability, autism spectrum disorder (ASD), Down syndrome, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), muscular dystrophy, and cystic fibrosis.

The question addressed in this chapter is whether the difference in the way we look at memory and the way it actually works might be the reason for the great number of conflicts and secondly, if we were able to embrace the broader, more accurate view, would it help solve or even prevent conflicts from occurring? The chapter presents an overview of the literature study into conflict and memory and a case study from my experience as a business coach working with the conflict between a fellowship of surgeons and the hospital board of directors.

In response to recent calls to better understand the brain’s role in organizational behavior, we propose a series of theoretical tests to examine the question “can brains manage?” Our tests ask whether brains can manage without bodies and without extracranial resources, whether they can manage in social isolation, and whether brains are the ultimate controllers of emotional and cognitive aspects of organizational behavior. Our analysis shows that, to accomplish work-related tasks in organizations, the brain relies on and closely interfaces with the body, interpersonal and social dynamics, and cognitive and emotional processes that are distributed across persons and artifacts. The results of this “thought experiment” suggest that the brain is more appropriately conceived as a regulatory organ that integrates top-down (i.e., social, artifactual and environmental) and bottom-up (i.e., neural) influences on organizational behavior, rather than the sole cause of that behavior. Drawing on a socially situated perspective, our analysis develops a framework that connects brain, body and mind to social, cultural, and environmental forces, as significant components of complex emotional and cognitive organizational systems. We discuss the implications for the emerging field of organizational cognitive neuroscience and for conceptualizing the interaction between the brain, cognition and emotion in organizations.