The hot career that won't cool down

Good news, bad news.

For the health care industry, it's very good news. For the economy, not so much. According to the Wall Street Journal, the slowdown (OK, near-recession) is causing a shakeout in a lot of industries. But in health care, nurses have become a reverse economic indicator, according to the article, and nurses are very much returning to the workplace.

For several years, flexibility has been the watchword in nursing care. Because of the demands of the job, hospital administrators and nursing staff members have built in a lot of creative solutions to the problem of stretch a part-time workforce across a full-time need.

With the economy changing, however, more nurses are returning to work full-time, a trend we've seen before.

It's a great short-term shift in health care, and doesn't in the least obviate the need for more help in that industry. Health care staff shortages continue to be acute, and as Baby Boomers age, and require more care (even as Baby Boomer nurses begin to retire), the job opportunities will only expand from there.

The real question remains, however, whether hospitals are willing to make this profession more attractive (financially and otherwise) to fill all those needed positions. This is not something that can be outsourced, you know.

What changes have you seen in health care as a career? And what about its future?


Photo by supercapacity

My roommate's first big-girl job

It's true, my roommate got her first job. After graduating last May with a BA in foreign languages and healthcare, she has devoted the last seven months to finding a job that combines her two passions. And she has finally found it!

She accepted a job working in client services at one of the nation's largest health insurance providers. She's been training now for a little over a month and is about halfway done her training program. As a rookie to the corporate world, I thought she could provide some unique insight through a series of Q&A sessions.

Here's what came of our first installment:

Question: What is the biggest challenge you've faced since starting your new job?

Answer: The biggest challenges I’ve faced since starting my new job have been adjusting to the type of work and retaining all the new information. Starting a job at the bottom in a vast field such as health care, in my opinion, is a great opportunity to learn the basics. We get the broadest foundation from the systems and terminology to the company itself. I had also thought that answering phones all day would be a mindless job; however, I quickly learned from day one that it is anything but, and no two calls are the same. Yet on the plus side, the pace and diversity of the job makes the day go by fast and keeps us free from boredom.

Q: How's the training process going?

A: Training is going well so far. After 4 weeks in a classroom learning how to use all our resources so that we can fully and accurately answer questions from our members, we have moved to a training lab. In the lab we are taking real member calls to the extent of the health plans we know thus far. I would have never known that there was so much information to learn when working in a call center and it’s for sure not as easy as I had imagined. The entire training process lasts roughly 12 weeks; so far we have 5 weeks down and counting.

Q: How is this job different from past jobs/internships?

A: This job is much different from anything I’ve ever done in the past. Coming right from a waitressing job where I was on my feet nonstop for 8-14 hours a day, it was quite a change to be sitting in front of a computer for the whole work day. It definitely took some adjusting and I was inundated with the amount of new material we are expected to learn. In comparison to an internship I did with a Department of Interpretive Services at a hospital, this job is similar in that my role is again as a middle-man. Whereas at my internship I shadowed an interpreter who relayed messages between patients and providers, I am now interpreting the questions and concerns of members who call and relating that to their health insurance policies.

Q: If you could sum up your experiences at your new job in three words, what would they be?

A: Team-oriented, purposeful, changing


***Stay tuned for more updates on my roommate's new job in the future. And if you have any questions you'd like me to ask my roommate, leave a comment.


Image from www.jfgi.org