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.

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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