Today was our visit to the Karolinska Institute, which was where we had our last lectures of the trip. We heard from three different women working on two different projects. While these particular lectures were very HPA-oriented, we were surprised at just how relevant they were to our LER major, too. The first lecture was on the twin studies that are conducted in Sweden. For almost a decade, Sweden has been tracking sets of twins that were reared together and separated, and documented their health, life progress, and death. We were amazed at how extensive these studies are and how much information has been collected. One of the presenters was working on a study on sleep and how it predicts dementia. The study looked at how long they slept, when they slept, when they woke up, and their age. This study was particularly interesting because sleep is very important to everyday life, and especially important for work outcomes. Without enough sleep, employees will be exhausted at work, and it will lead to burnout (which was covered in a later lecture) and place people at risk for dementia.
After the first group of lectures, we had a break and were able to grab lunch at a cafe on campus. After lunch, we re-grouped where we heard a second lecture on burn-out, specifically of women pre- and post-menopause. This study ?? This lecture was also extremely relevant to our LER studies for obvious reasons, and it was interesting to learn more about it from a perspective we may not have considered. The data collected from the study, such as cortisol levels, showed concrete evidence of the physical effects of burnout, rather than the psychological effects that are more often studied.
In this study, we were surprised at how often burnout occurred in Swedish women, particularly with their extensive parental and personal leave and shorter work weeks in comparison with a typical American work schedule. While the percentage of workers dealing with burnout in very low relative to the rate in America (4% in Sweden vs. an estimated 20% in the US according to our discussion), we expected it to be lower. Our perception of Swedish work-life balance with incredible vacation, fika breaks, highly regulated working hours and overall more laid back lifestyle previously led us to believe that burnout wouldn’t be a problem. We admired, however, the depth of the study on a bio-chemical level to understand the issue that such a small percentage of their population deals with.
After the lectures, we had the chance to explore the old town and visit the little shops that line the streets. We each found little souvenirs to bring back home so that we had something to remind me of our incredible trip!
~Holly and Kallie