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So while I’ve already previously written about how great being a Traveling Nurse is and provided you with the statistics surrounding the position, I’d like to expand just a bit further and give the top five reasons why you should really consider this wonderful profession.

See New Places, Meet New People

As a traveling nurse, you have the opportunity to try out a new city every couple of months. Some nurses refer to their travel nursing careers as a ‘working vacation’. Nurses are able to work their shifts each week most nurses work three 12-hour shifts or four 10-hour shifts per week and then site see around the new city on their days off or on their long weekends! There are few career opportunities out there where one can see the country and travel, all while earning an income and fulfilling professional goals.

Many travel nurses have the option to extend their contracts to meet hospital needs. So, if someone loves the area they’re in and they aren’t ready to leave, they can stay longer! Travel nursing also creates a great opportunity to meet new people. Many hospitals use travel nurses consistently throughout the year, which creates the opportunity to meet other travel nurses. If a nurse is traveling alone, this is a great way to network and create some long lasting friendships across the country with people who have similar interests!

Make More Money

There are many financial perks to travel nursing. One of the great benefits to being a traveling professional is that, if you meet the qualifications (which most do as long as you maintain a permanent tax home), you are eligible to receive tax free benefits from your travel nursing agency. These benefits can include daily meals and incidental per diems; tax free housing in the form of a furnished one bedroom apartment or tax free daily lodging per diems; tax free travel reimbursement, and much more. The great thing about tax free benefits is that you can potentially take home more money after taxes than you would in a permanent, non-traveling position. Also, some hospitals or agencies will offer travel nurses higher pay rates or completion bonuses for certain critical openings. On many travel assignments, the opportunity to work overtime is also available!

Read more at: http://inspiringexperts.com/blog/five-great-reasons-to-be-a-traveling-nurse/

The healthcare field continues to grow each year, and while healthcare administration careers do not involve directly caring for patients, they can provide a multitude of rewarding career opportunities. Healthcare administrators use their business skills to manage the way that facilities provide care for those who are ill or injured. Often, they specialize in a particular area, such as finance, human resources, information technology, marketing, public affairs, or planning and development. There are many reasons why you should choose a career in healthcare administration, some of which are listed below.

Choice of Employer

People with skills in healthcare administration can work in a variety of settings. There are job opportunities available in hospitals, clinics, skilled nursing facilities, rehabilitation centers, nursing homes, mental health organizations, health insurance organizations, diagnostic laboratories, dentist’s offices, home health care services, and consulting firms. Some healthcare administration jobs even involve working with the military or the Department of Veteran Affairs.

Many Available Job Opportunities

Healthcare is the largest industry in the United States and healthcare facilities are the nation’s second largest employer. Although all healthcare facilities need administrative personnel to some extent, the larger organizations have the greatest need for managers with experience in healthcare administration. Some of the possible job titles you might find when looking for a career in healthcare administration include head of managed care, head of corporate development, head of support services, head of professional services, head of nursing, head of patient care, and head of ambulatory services. There are also the same sorts of executive titles you’d find in a private corporation, such as CEO, COO, CIO, CFO, and CMO.

A Bachelor’s degree is needed for the lower level jobs in healthcare administration, while a Master’s degree is a requirement for most senior executive positions. There are programs that offer a PhD in healthcare administration, but this type of degree is seldom a requirement for most jobs. The PhD is most useful for people who want to research, write, or teach about issues relating to healthcare policy.

Chance for Self Improvement

Healthcare administration is a career field that values self improvement. Most employers offer opportunities for professional development through attending seminars, earning certifications, or completing a degree program. Having the opportunity to learn new skills is considered to be a vital part of your success as an administrator.

Read more at: http://www.ask.com/explore/top-reasons-choose-career-healthcare-administration

Abstract

Nurses are the largest group of health care professionals providing direct patient care in hospitals, and the quality of care for hospital patients is strongly linked to the performance of nursing staff, according to an Institute of Medicine report. This paper describes the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s (RWJF’s) work in nursing, which focuses on improving the hospital work environment to attract and retain high-quality nursing staff, with the ultimate goal of improving patient care and outcomes in hospitals. Other organizations’ efforts to address the nurse shortage are also explored.

THE ROBERT WOOD JOHNSON Foundation (RWJF) is dedicated to improving the health and health care of all Americans. Central to this mission is transforming the way care is delivered at the bedside to reduce the shortage in nurse staffing and improves the quality of nursing care.

Nurses are the linchpins in providing high-quality patient care in hospitals. To attract high-quality staff, enable them to do their best work, and keep them as long-term employees, improvements must be made in the organization of work and use of information technology (IT); physical design and allocation of space; and hospital leadership and culture. Working with various partners, the RWJF expects to build support for a new kind of hospital that reflects the needs and realities of the twenty-first century: a hospital where patient safety is assured, quality of care is paramount, efficiencies are maximized, and staff are satisfied with and actively supported in their jobs.

Although this initiative begins with the nursing profession, the results from these efforts are expected to affect all health care workers in hospitals and the millions of patients whom they serve.

A ‘Perfect Storm’ For Nurses And Patients

Throughout the past few decades, U.S. hospitals have faced cyclical shortages of nurses; in 2000 an estimated 126,000 hospital nursing positions were unfilled.2 The percentage of nurses working in hospitals dropped from 59 percent in 2000 to a little more than 56 percent in 2004.3 The current nurse shortage is driven by a broad set of factors related to recruitment and retention among them, fewer workers, an aging workforce, and unsatisfying work environments that have contributed to a different kind of shortage that is more complex, more serious, and expected to last longer than previous shortages.

Read more at: http://content.healthaffairs.org/content/25/1/268.full

Locum tenens is Latin for “one who substitutes temporarily for another”. The origin of locum tenens dates back to the 1970s, but is becoming increasing popular in today’s healthcare realm. Many physicians that choose a locum tenens contract are staffed at hospitals, outpatient clinics, group practices and community healthcare facilities. If you are a newly graduated physician looking for a job or a veteran physician that wants to explore other options within the field, listed below are five of the most attractive benefits of being a temporary physician.

Try Out a Different Practice

Locum tenens offers the ability for a physician to practice in a new setting. If you are considering moving from a large hospital to a rural, small group or multi-specialty practice, becoming a locum tenens physician will afford you the opportunity to “test” out another practice before fully committing to a position.

Transition into Retirement

Because it is only a temporary placement, locum tenens offers a unique opportunity to physicians that have been retired, yet still have the itch to return to medicine for short periods of time. Temporary placement would allow retired doctors to not only pursue their passion for helping others, but also maintain their skills. For physicians considering retirement, this avenue offers a great way to wean yourself out of the profession.

Travel around the Country

If you love exploring new places, becoming a locum tenens physician can offer you the benefit of progressing your career while experiencing life in different geographical surroundings. Some physicians find the thought of traveling all over the country very appealing but find it difficult to fit a vacation into their busy schedules. While switching from one locale to the other, a locum tenens physician can learn from diverse cultures and be exposed to a variety of work environments. As an added benefit, in most locum tenens contracts, the physician’s travel and housing expenses are covered.

Receive Free Malpractice Insurance

A big issue on the minds of physicians is medical malpractice insurance, which can become quite expensive. Most locum tenens assignments will cover a physician’s insurance payments for the duration of the contract, which makes temporary placement an attractive option for those who are responsible for their own coverage.

Read more at: http://www.healthecareers.com/article/5-benefits-of-being-a-temporary-physician/169362

“The jobs in the future will be different from the jobs in the past,” one industry executive tells U.S. News.

A few years ago, hospital leaders like William Leaver were hiring radiologists, cardiologists and other specialists to maximize fee-for-service payments. Today, the CEO of Des Moines, Iowa-based UnityPoint Healthcare seeks patient navigators, care coordinators and mid-level nurse practitioners to guide patients’ care outside its 30 hospitals. Leaver is outfitting his nonprofit integrated health system as a hospital of tomorrow. In doing so, he is busy standardizing operations across UnityPoint’s hospitals, 280 clinics and home care operations in eight Iowa and Illinois markets, and making very different hiring choices than he used to. “The jobs in the future will be different from the jobs in the past,” Leaver says.

That’s a far cry from the heyday of fee-for-service medicine. In 2004, the three biggest in-demand specialty physicians were radiologists, anesthesiologists and cardiologists, according to physician recruiting firm Merritt Hawkins. Today, the first two don’t crack the top 20, and cardiologists were No. 15, according to the 2013 Merritt Hawkins survey.

Instead, hospitals overwhelmingly seek primary care providers. “Primary care, across the nation, is everybody’s No. 1 search,” says Mike Houttekier, manager of physician recruiting at Allegiance Health, a 411-bed hospital in Jackson, Mich. fFamily medicine, internal medicine and hospitalist physicians (primarily internists who work exclusively in the hospital) were the top three physician searches Merritt Hawkins conducted over the last year. “Demand also is increasing rapidly for nurse practitioners and physicians assistants,” says Susan Salka, president and CEO of AMN Healthcare, a health care workforce solution company. For the first time in 20 years, Merritt Hawkinswhich is owned by AMNsaw nurse practitioners and physicians assistants crack the top 20 searches conducted, at No. 10 and No. 12, respectively.

Hospital staffing changes are driven by an aging population, a physician workforce shortage and health care reform. The Affordable Care Act emphasizes prevention, encourages value-based payment and, in January, begins to provide insurance coverage to more than 30 million newly insured patients. Payment is shifting from predominantly fee-for-service to one that puts hospitals at risk for patient care both in- and outside the hospital’s walls. Besides hiring more primary care providers, hospitals also are aggressively hiring emergency physiciansmore newly insured patients are expected to boost emergency room usecare coordinators and other patient care advocates, clinical pharmacists, health IT and data experts.

Read more at: http://health.usnews.com/health-news/hospital-of-tomorrow/articles/2013/10/16/staffing-the-hospital-of-tomorrow

May 12, the anniversary of Florence Nightingale’s birth, is celebrated around the world as International Nurses Day. According to the International Council of Nurses, this year’s theme is “Nurses: A Force for Change.”

Florence Nightingale found her calling by revolutionizing nursing care of wounded soldiers during the Crimean War of 1854. She dedicated her life to campaigning for change in hospital sanitation and medical care in general, making her a force for change by anyone’s measure. Her book Notes on Nursing, published 155 years ago, continues to be the gold standard on nursing care for the profession.

It’s a particularly timely topic given the rapidly changing health care system in the U.S. and the more than 7 million newly insured Americans. As our global population starts to age, health care as a business is growing rapidly. The rise of local clinics offering ambulatory services and new models of care, such as medical homes, is an outcome of greater demand for services by an aging population. Already the shortage of primary care physicians is being felt.

To help fill that gap, the role of the nurse practitioner will continue to expand. Recruiting, training and then retaining enough nurses will be crucial. Programs such as the Nurse Faculty Leadership Academy, a 22-month program from Sigma Theta Tau, the Nursing Honor Society, encourages nurses to remain in the profession and lead others to do the same.

Investing in continuing education for nurses is also vital if we are to ensure that they continue to provide the best patient care possible. One important facet is leveraging the tools to manage the millions of pages and terabytes of the most current research available. More importantly, health and medical professionals need their information “in the workflow” — that is, in the most convenient, easily accessible way that improves but doesn’t interfere with the ongoing treatment of the patient.

But information is one thing. Using it to its best advantage is quite another. More importantly, being able to trust the source of information is vital. Search engines are adequate enough for the casual self-diagnosis, but they fall short of the sophisticated interdisciplinary knowledge of treatments and equally sophisticated processes required to ensure quality care. There are thousands of journals publishing new research papers every day; Elsevier alone publishes about 2,200 journals! New drugs are approved while old ones are discontinued. Studies on new drug discoveries, possible interactions and new uses for existing drugs are regularly announced. And because illness and acute care does not adhere to a standard 9-to-5 workday, clinicians need access 24/7 to the very latest data.

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/olivier-dumon/rx-for-health-care-nursing-as-a-force-for-change_b_5268083.html