career
Donna Kentley had wanted to be a nurse since she was a girl. In college, her plans changed when she met a physician assistant while working at a teaching hospital in Boston. She became intrigued with the profession and later changed her major from nursing to biology, then started trying to figure out whether PA studies or medical school would be the better fit for her. As she weighed the pros and cons of each, she worried that the work demands she’d face as a doctor might swallow up her personal and family life. “I liked the idea of having...
Physician assistants are poised for much faster-than-average job growth over the next several years. How fast? The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts 30 percent job growth for PAs from 2010 to 2020—more than twice the average for all occupations. Why? With more doctors going into specialty care, the need for primary care providers will continue to grow, and the government predicts that physician assistants will take center stage in filling that gap. But get this: Many PAs—just like the MDs who supervise them—also are opting to specialize instead of pursuing primary care. Primary care vs. specialty care In 2000,...
Choosing a first career can be a crapshoot because it’s hard to know what a job is really like until you’ve experienced it. You may be passionate about the law, until you realize the long hours could clash with your desire to have a personal life. Maybe you’ve always wanted to go into politics, but discover you don’t like dealing with constituents. By now, you know what you don’t like or you wouldn’t be considering nursing school. You may have even thought about what you like about nursing, but how can you tell if nursing is for you before you...
Experts say that thanks to five developments facing the nursing industry, job prospects are likely to look up in coming years. And if you’ve either just entered nursing school or are planning to go, you may be in a good position to benefit. The graying of the country’s population According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), the ranks of the elderly will grow faster than any other group in the population from through 2018. And the longer Baby Boomers stick around, the more treatment they’ll need for age-related issues, whether it’s something as major as a fall or minor,...
A recent work force survey turned heads by revealing a sharp uptick in American employers struggling to find qualified job candidates. “They are looking for evermore specific skill sets and taking longer to fill job vacancies as they wait for the economy to fully rebound and their business to get back to ‘normal,’” ManpowerGroup wrote in the report. On the brighter side, health care didn’t rank among the fields where U.S. employers are having the toughest time filling jobs. In fact, the health care sector’s been adding lots of jobs. And Researchers at Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the...
In a perfect world, all you’d have to do for career bliss is go back to school, get trained for a new career, and have a job waiting for you when you graduated. And not just any job, mind you, but the one that’s perfect for you, with just the right salary. Unfortunately, life doesn’t work that way, especially in this economy, says Seattle-based career coach David Goodenough. “The silliest concept in the world is that you are going to go to school and then you are going to go to the career center and get a job. You can’t just go...
Software companies like Epic Systems Corp. are growing as more doctor’s offices and hospitals scrap mountains of paper files and bring their medical records into the digital age. Epic was pretty small a decade ago, with 575 employees. Today, it employs 5,100 people, is expanding its expanding its headquarters near Madison, Wisc., and plans to hire 1,000 more people this year, The New York Times reports. Thousands of health care providers are expected to go digital this year as they take advantage of up to $27 billion in federal stimulus dollars the government started to disburse last May, The Times...
If you’re giving some thought to a career in health care, chances are you like the idea of helping people. That doesn’t mean you have to like the people you’re helping. Seriously. Not everyone is a people person. There’s no shame in preferring the idea of sifting through mountains of medical records in the peace and quiet of a windowless back office vs. interacting with dozens of people, young and old, kind and curmudgeonly, every day, all day long. There are plenty of great health care jobs out there that entail very little, if any, patient contact. Here are just...
Allied health. If you’ve been researching careers in the health field, you’ve probably run across this term (yep, we’ve got it in our title) and you’re probably wondering what it means. It’s a label that’s been used for a vast array of health care professions for decades—everything from nutritionists and phlebotomists to dental assistants and ultrasound techs. Yet you won’t find it in Merriam-Webster’s medical or general purpose dictionaries. The definition listed on The Association of Schools of Allied Health Professions‘ website is wordy and doesn’t quite explain what differentiates an allied health professional from a doctor or dentist. So...
If you think doctors and dentists are the only health care professionals who make big bucks, guess again. Almost half of the 50-plus career paths featured on AllAlliedHealthSchools.com boast salaries of more than $70,000 a year. Here’s a look at eight promising allied health careers that can command six-figure salaries: Physician assistants examine, diagnose and treat patients, performing many of the same duties as the medical doctors who supervise them. Most work in primary care clinics, others in schools, prisons or home health care settings. High end of median annual salary: $101,690. Public health practice program managers develop, implement and evaluate public...
Two fast-growing fields health care sound an awful lot alike. But don’t be fooled: A medical assistant is not the same thing as a physician assistant. How different are these two professions? Here’s a quick side-by-side: Medical Assistants Physician Assistants Perform administrative tasks such as updating medical records and arranging for lab services, as well as clinical duties like taking medical histories and recording vital signs. Practice medicine under the supervision of physicians and surgeons, often serving as the principal health care provider in rural or inner-city clinics. Usually need just a high school diploma or the equivalent to get started....
One of the smartest things you can do as you chart your career path is to find someone who’s been there, done that and achieved great success. Mentors can offer invaluable guidance on day-to-day ups and downs, long-term goals and oh so many things in between. So how do you go about finding one? “The first thing to do is to look for a formal mentoring program, either through your school if you’re a student, or a professional association,” says Dr. Janet Scarborough Civitelli, a workplace psychologist and career counselor who runs the career consulting firm VocationVillage.com. Many organizations can...
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The All Allied Health Schools blog covers what you need to know about preparing for a career in health care today, whether you’re just starting to think about your new career or you’re ready to enroll in school.
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