Physician work-life balance

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No one will contest that being a physician (M.D.) is a challenging career and the education and training to become a doctor is equally challenging. Today’s physicians-both male and female- are questioning the required unbelievably long work hours as well as the hours spent on-call that have been traditional for decades. Spending time with family is highly desirable as is much needed ‘down-time” in general. As the saying goes, as someone faces their mortality and reflects back on their life, it rarely if ever is said “I wish I spent more time at work”.

An interesting post written by Michelle AU, M.D., an Anesthesiologist addresses the fact that today’s physicians are “choosing to limit their work-hours, altering the scope of their practice, and deciding to concentrate of medical specialties based on lifestyle choices as much as interest in the medicine itself. In essence, the current crop of young doctors is recalibrating the personal and professional expectations set by our predecessors, taking the radical stance that the work-life balance applicable to all other professionals might possibly be applied to us as well.” What can be driving this movement to work-life balance is the disturbing fact that “physicians have a higher rate of suicide than the general population-40% higher for male doctors, and an astonishing 130% higher for female physicians.”

Dr. Au references Gardiner Harris’s article in The New York Times, “More Doctors Say No to Endless Workdays.” This article follows a 3 generation family of medical doctors –both male and female-and their experiences regarding work hours and working conditions within their chosen practices. It also contains information gathered by a top physician recruitment firm that has found that younger doctors are seeking a better quality of life when conducting a job search. “Merritt Hawkins, a top doctor recruitment firm, reported that 51 percent of the positions it filled in the past year were for hospitals, up from 14 percent eight years ago. And even a growing share of the jobs the company filled in private practices included income guarantees from hospitals. Young doctors surveyed by Merritt Hawkins listed quality of life well above finances as the most important factor in their job searches, and just 1 percent said they were willing to practice alone. Many young doctors will not take jobs that require them to be on call.”

All of us know that we perform better in our jobs or careers when we somehow manage an acceptable balance between the time needed to perform our jobs at a high level and spend time with our families and just having some fun. Physicians are no different. Does anyone really believe an exhausted and depressed doctor is a top practitioner?

Hospital Careers

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Hospitals offer healthcare workers rewarding employment at large-scale facilities dedicated to serving the medical needs of a community. As an important source of medical jobs, hospitals remain a significant employer and career destination for healthcare workers. Hospitals are often some of the largest private employers in a community, requiring hundreds of medical workers to maintain a desired level of patient care. Hospital employees frequently have the benefit of caring for patients in a highly collaborative, stimulating work environment.
Hospitals employ a diverse group of medical workers to provide complete and professional in-house patient care. Hospitals deal with all types of major medical, surgical and diagnostic treatments and require a trained, experienced medical staff to support those areas, especially for care involving overnight stays. Healthcare jobs found in hospital settings include those in pharmacy, respiratory, anesthesiology, physical therapy, nursing, emergency, surgery, oncology, laboratory, X-ray and administration. The wide variety of employment at hospitals gives employees exposure to different medical career paths as they go about their workday.
Hospital jobs provide excellent salaries and benefits. With hospitals generally compensating physicians better than private practice, many prefer to work in hospital settings. Employment at hospitals offer physicians many advantages over private practice with not only better pay, but also income guarantees, flexible work hours, and higher bonuses. The median compensation for primary-care specialists is also expected to continue increasing. The benefits of working at hospitals are a strong draw for medical workers.
Physicians with specialized training are employed at hospitals to deal with specific medical issues. Hospital jobs available to physicians may be one of the following: Anesthetist, Cardiologist, Endocrinologist, Epidemiologist, General practitioners, Gynecologist, Immunologist, Neurologist, Nutritionist, Oncologist, Ophthalmologist, Pathologist, Psychiatrist, Pediatrician, and Radiologist. Hospital ties to local universities make them a center for educational training enabling healthcare workers to further their certification.

Find hospital jobs on www.jobjobhealth.com

Are you looking for a career in a hospital, find your next pharmacist jobs, nursing jobs, physicians jobs, therapy jobs or nuclear medicine jobs on the largest healthcare job search engine http://www.jobjobhealth.com/lp-hospital-jobs.html

Is a heathcare career for you?

When deciding what you want to be when you grow up, which can apply to anyone that is considering a career change or 3 or 4, it is good to make an assessment of your skills/talents, interests, work style, how well do you handle stress, are you happy being a workaholic (yes, some people are) and what are your economic needs and how to they line up with your need to make the word a better place.

There are common denominators when considering jobs in health care or more specifically healthcare careers. To have a successful career in health care one must first have a strong inherent urge to contribute to making the world a better place; to improve the quality of life for those with medical and psychological challenges.

When considering a medical career one needs to have a flexible mind-set and thrive on the unpredictable. If you are most comfortable knowing that when you go to work what exactly you will be tackling, at what time and want limited social interaction with co-workers perhaps the somewhat chaotic work in healthcare may not be for you. Team work with multiple co-workers is imperative for successful patient outcomes-extroverted personalities seem to thrive in this environment.;

While working some of the hours required in a hospital environment may considered a hardship for some, the scheduling flexibility can be perfect for some. For instance, nurses with young families like working the off shifts and weekends because child care is available. If you are a person who absolutely must have evenings and weekends off, a nursing position might not work for you. http://www.jobjobhealth.com/k-nurse-jobs.html

Two factors that are considered a plus for those working in healthcare are the job security, or as secure as you can get these days, and a very adequate hourly wage or salary. http://www.jobjobhealth.com/salary-charts-calculator.html Healthcare Administrators, Advanced Practice Nurses, Physical Therapists, Scientists, Clinical Research Associates and well as a variety of Physician specialties all receive generous compensation for their work as a few examples. If you thrive on stress and challenges, enjoy working as a team member in a somewhat unpredictable environment and have a strong urge to help others, working in health care may be for you.

Health care careers provide flexible hours

What are working parents looking for in a new healthcare job? The first thing is a competitive compensation package-wages plus benefits and the second is generally a flexible schedule. What some medical workers view as a down side of working in health care; working off shifts, holidays and weekends, parents working in the health industry often find advantageous.

Many hospitals offer a weekend alternative work option where most often nurses can work every weekend usually Friday night shift through Sunday nights. Many times this staffing model also includes the perk of working 24 hours and getting paid for 32. Hospitals have found that by implementing this type of schedule their weekend staffing needs are met and the nurses working the weekend alternative have their child care needs met while continuing to earn a nice income. These nursing positions can be quite popular with nurses (women and men) with young children.

A recent post on aol.com discussed the top 10 jobs with parent friendly hoursand nursing ranked number 1. In addition to the week end work option, in-house float pools are popular with nurses where there are minimal scheduling requirements but should the patient census go down there is a chance of being canceled and not being paid. Working for an outside staffing agency also brings scheduling flexibility and extra pay as long as a RN is experienced and can hit the ground running.

While working in health care is not for everyone, scheduling flexibility provides a real perk for not only parents but for those medical professionals with other requirements such as taking classes or traveling. Good luck in your health career.

Jobs in healthcare continue to grow

More and more posts and articles within the employment community are pointing to statistics that enforce the overall view that we are in recovery mode from the traumatic down-sizing of 2007/2008. Recent statistics from a number of sources are citing there are overall about 7 million less jobs available now than there were in 2007-this is in all industries. The unemployment rate continues to drop by the month and there are certain industries where growth will be the most robust.

Some jobs will be lost indefinitely but others will to continue to recover and grow. Health care is an industry that is seeing a steady increase in job growth. Some areas such as Healthcare IT, have that almost forgotten concept of supply vs. demand in place. There is actually a demand for experienced professionals in EMR, HER, Coding and other areas of IT with a limited supply of qualified jobseekers to fill those positions.

Rick Newman at USnews.com has written an interesting post pointing to 10 industries that will hire the most in 2011. He “used data from research firm IBISWorld to measure projected job growth in 2011 for nearly 700 industries and sub-industries. Unlike government or industry data that measures employment levels in the past, IBISWorld uses revenue forecasts, productivity data, and the expertise of analysts to estimate job changes in the future. The outlook can help workers and employers better understand the job market—and it also helps illustrate some of the most important ways the U.S. economy is changing.”

Rick cites 2 categories within health care where job growth will be the strongest. One is physician job growth and the other is nursing homes and elder care. The need for physicians and especially specialty physicians in certain geographic areas has always persisted even during the past few recession years. Popular urban areas continue to be a draw for most specialists with more remote areas struggling to find adequate physician coverage. The data is showing 63,000 new physician jobs will need to be filled in the coming year.

The need to fill 43,000 new jobs in elder care comes as no surprise. These jobs are in both extended care/long term care facilities and well as home care. Jobs for home health aides, certified nursing assistants, LPNs, RNs, therapists, geriatric nurse practitioners, physician assistants, physicians as well as support staff will continue to grow as the population ages.

The economy continues to slowly but surely recover from the employment trauma of the past few years. Jobs in healthcare again appear to dominate the recovery and experienced health care professionals remain in demand.

Good luck in your medical career.

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How can nurses use social media to search jobs

A recent survey by AMN Healthcare shows that health care professionals are using social media for career development and nurses are the number users of social media for career growth.

An article published in healthcareITnews.com, states a “survey was conducted by AMN Healthcare, which bills itself as the nation’s largest healthcare staffing and workforce solutions company. AMN Healthcare’s “2010 Social Media Survey of Healthcare Professionals” was designed to provide healthcare employers and leaders a snapshot of how healthcare professionals are currently using social media and other online applications for networking, job hunting and other career development activities. The survey, which was conducted this fall, received 1,248 responses. “

Some interesting stats:

• Thirty-eight percent of clinicians surveyed are currently seeking employment, and 12 percent of current job seekers have been looking for more than a year.
• Nurses have had a significantly shorter job search than their fellow professionals, averaging three months, compared to just less than seven months for physicians and allied professionals, and nine months for pharmacists.
• Thirty-seven percent of clinicians reported using social media for professional networking; nurses had the highest use among healthcare workers at 41 percent to search for nurse jobs.
• Ten percent of healthcare professionals are using mobile job alerts to find the latest hot jobs, but only 3 percent have received an interview, 2 percent have received a job offer and 1 percent secured a new job.
• Physicians are by far the heaviest users of mobile devices for professional reasons among their medical colleagues; 37 percent used healthcare-related applications and 17 percent used mobile devices for healthcare-related content or jobs. Check out the latest iphone app from http://www.jobjobhealth.com/ at the itune store http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/jobjobhealth/id413438423?mt=8
• Sixty-four percent of the clinicians surveyed would choose Facebook, the clear favorite, if they could choose only one social networking site for employement.

Also interesting is the survey found “that traditional methods of recruitment such as referrals, online job boards and search engines are not being superseded by social media, whereas social media does surpass other job search methods such as newspaper ads, career fairs and other methods.” Good news for those of us that have developed job search engines.

Enjoy the article in its entirety http://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/survey-nurses-highest-users-social-media-career-development.

Calling all IT professionals for a career in health care

With the switch to EMR (Electronic Medical records), the demand for experienced health care IT specialists and specifically Clinical Informatics specialists is growing at a tremendous rate. Any business owner that contracts IT professionals knows that finding talented programmers and retaining them can be a challenge in such a high demand area. Clinical informatics specialist positions are relatively new so competition among medical employers for experienced professionals in this area can be fierce.

Bernie Monegain over at HealthcareITnews.com has written an interesting post highlighting the competition in this growing area by healthcare employers for talented IT specialists. http://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/clinical-it-professionals-hard-find A recent study by the Hay Group has found that healthcare companies are growing their EMR programs at a rapid rate in response to the American Recovery Acts. The study points out that many healthcare organizations have formed clinical informatics positions without the needed structure due in part to “lack of benchmark data and understanding of best practices”. This is not surprising given the rapid growth in this area and the need to” learn and you go” in an area as new as clinical informatics.

As with any specialty in health care that is relatively new –most often driven by new technology- health care IT is now an area of tremendous job growth. Experienced Health IT specialist can “call the shots” (for now anyway) as we have seen in other areas of health care where demand in high and supply is low. This again shows that the health care industry is an area of tremendous opportunity not only for direct care providers but for those behind the scenes that improve efficiency and help to provide better patient outcomes.

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Top health care careers in 2011

Looks like there is more information being published out there indicating that hiring within healthcare for the next year will be increasing. Carol Tice,http://jobs.aol.com/articles/2010/12/06/top-industries-hiring-in-2011/  has written an article that highlights the perceived hottest industries that will increase hiring for 2011. As you might have guessed, healthcare is on the list and even better rated as number one. The folks over at PayScale “talked to two employment experts: Career expert Robin Ryan, author of ‘60 Seconds and You’re Hired,’ and Laurence Shatkin, author of ‘2011 Career Plan.’ “

“There’s never been a recession in this sector, says Shatkin, and demand will continue to be strong next year. Jobs in demand include home health care aides and registered nurses ($61,148). Hot specialties within nursing include nurse anesthetists ($144,821), nurse practitioners ($86,774) and psychiatric nurses ($55,155).” By the way, you can access the pay rates of all jobs within healthcare by job title and location using the PayScale widgets we have on our site http://www.jobjobhealth.com/salary-charts-calculator.html

Of course, there are many other positions within healthcare that are not related to direct patient care-jobs within biotech, pharma and the life science industries as well as the hot jobs within healthcare I.T.-electronic medical records, medical coders, etc. It appears that employment within certain healthcare industries will be potentially strong for the coming year.