Spotlight on Healthcare Systems & Professional Challenges

How do systems quietly exhaust the people meant to sustain them? In this JOSHA Spotlight, five pieces map the hidden workload behind healthcare, higher education, and research. It traces antifungal drug resistance from environment to clinic, where agricultural azole use can select resistant fungi and further narrow an already limited treatment toolkit, strengthening the case for coordinated One Health surveillance and regulation across borders. It then turns to primary care, where “nonclinical” demands, prior authorizations, mandated forms, and electronic health record inbox labor, consume time meant for patients and accelerate burnout. Beyond medicine, it highlights student precarity in Germany: merit scholarships can total up to €1,155 per month, yet may interact with BAföG rules and eligibility. Finally, it spotlights academic publishing debates: Projekt DEAL expanded open access, but critics argue it doesn’t resolve structural cost and incentive problems, thus renewing interest in Diamond Open Access models.