health care
Here’s a compilation of some of the best blogs and websites that will help keep you up-to-date on health care topics—and possibly keep you a step ahead of your peers when you enroll in a health-care program. The Journal of the American Academy of Physician Assistants’ blog is a worthy read by itself, and also links to a collection of additional blogs written by PAs. Health News Review—From the University of Minnesota, a weekly roundup of the best- and lowest-quality media coverage of health topics. PubMed is one of the most comprehensive medical sites on the web, with links to...
If you’re thinking about a career in health care and you want to make sure the field you choose is growing, we have good news for you: Health care tops the latest projections for job growth from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Baby boomers are aging, medical technologies are advancing and there’s an increasing focus on preventive care – all factors that are driving the need for highly-skilled health care workers. There’s another demographic that’s fueling job growth for the fastest-growing profession in allied health: pets. Yes, pets – for many of us, their health is as important as...
From hospitals and insurance companies to clinics and nursing homes, the health care industry as a whole is working feverishly to modernize how they track patients and the care those patients receive. If you’re a tech whiz, there’s an emerging field of study that combines information technology, clinical practice and business management you may want to consider. It’s called health informatics, and it’s all about how technology can improve the way health data are collected, stored, processed and communicated. Right now, health informatics programs are far outnumbered by related programs that have been around longer, such as health information technology or...
Sonography’s probably best known for its ultrasound technology that enables obstetricians to peek at a developing fetus inside the mother’s womb. But sonography’s applications are far more wide-ranging, providing a closer look at organs, tissues and blood vessels so that abnormalities and potential problems can be detected. It’s definitely not a career for the faint of heart. Do you have what it takes? Three must-have traits for sonographers 1. Tact One of the most rewarding aspects of the sonographer’s job is working directly with patients—but it’s also one of the most challenging. Your patient might be perfectly healthy, but he...
Public health workers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and local and state agencies throughout the country are responsible for detecting and identifying threats to health, whether localized or widespread. Here are just a handful of the biggest medical mysteries that might have gone unsolved if not for the ingenuity and persistence of those in the public health field. 1. Legionnaire’s disease The mystery: After returning from a state convention in Philadelphia in July 1976, American Legionnaires began showing pneumonia-like symptoms and fevers spiking to as high as 107 degrees. Eventually, 221 were sickened and 34 had...
Physical therapy is one of many health care fields with promising prospects for job growth. As the Baby Boomer population grows, so will the need for trained professionals who can help them with rehabilitative exercises and activities to relieve pain, boost mobility and strengthen muscles. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics’ latest set of detailed projections, employment for physical therapists is expected to grow by 30 percent from 2008 to 2018—much faster than the average for all professions. Whether you’re interested in becoming a physical therapist or a physical therapy assistant, here are six traits that will serve...
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,...
Job growth in the health care and social assistance sectors will outpace all other fields of over the next decade, according to the latest projections from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Overall, the U.S. economy is expected to grow 14.3 percent, or add 20.5 million jobs, from 2010 to 2020. More than one-quarter of those new jobs (5.6 million) will be in health care and social assistance—a category that encompasses a wide range of professionals who work in hospitals, doctor’s offices, nursing and residential care facilities and other settings. In all, a whopping one-third of the occupations that are...
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...
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...
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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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