Have You Thought About This Job?

Are you a night owl? Do you function better in the wee hours of the morning? Are you interested in a health career in the Medical Field? Are you interested in a job change? If you answered yes to any of these questions, have I got the perfect job for you!

In the field of sleep technologist, you assist in the evaluation and follow up care of patients with sleep disorders. Credited by the Board of Registered Polysomnographic Technology, it would allow you to work in sleep centers, laboratories for the sleep related breathing disorders, home environments and non-facility based settings under the direction of a sleep specialist. Some of your duties would be the following:

-Ensuring the instruments are properly functioning
-completing required equipment and patient signals calibrations at beginning and end of the study.
-running continuous polkysomnographic monitoring
-responding to and correcting equipment malfunction
-recognizing sleep stages and wakefulness
-maintaining a log study events and interventions
-making the patient comfortable and safe
-performing evaluation of excessive sleepiness and the ability to maintain wakefulness

You’ll also be having some hands on jobs as well such as reviewing the patients clinical history to understand the sleep related problems they are experiencing. You’ll be recording the patients vital signs of weight, height, neck circumference, medical history and blood pressure. Discussing with the patients ways to help develop better sleep habits that will promote good sleep hygiene will also be one of your duties.

Excellent communication skills are also a plus. You may find yourself talking to the patient about the questions and concerns they might have about the procedure and treatment. You’ll be talking to the patients family, the Sleep Medicine physician, and other technologists and physicians. Communication with the other nighttime workers and also with the daytime co-workers who’ll be taking over the study about concerns, finding and interventions about the patient. You’ll be communicating with the physician through various means including conversation, written logs and electronic logs about the course of the study, significant findings and observations and interventions used and the results of those interventions.

You may be qualified and asked to perform other tasks and duties as well such as administer and manage a sleep center, sleep lab, or other sleep Medicine practice. This would include patient scheduling, material and supply management, supervision of staff, students and other personnel, help with the development of policies and procedures, billing, preventative maintenance and data management. You could also be asked to do clinical and didactic teaching, training, raising public awareness and supervising patient support groups related to sleep disorders.

Some of the physical requirements of this job would be standing, using hands to finger or feel, reach with hands and arms, climb or balance. You would occasionally be asked to walk, sit, stoop, kneel crouch or crawl. You should be able to lift regularly up to 10 pounds and frequently lift and move up to 50 pounds. You also have to have close vision, distance vision, color vision, peripheral vision, depth perception and ability to adjust focus.

If this jobs sounds like something you’d be interested in, why not take that leap, make a career move and inquire further? It could be just the job in health care you’re looking for!

by

Linda Lee Ruzicka

Linda Lee Ruzicka lives in the mountains of Western PA , happily married and with her 9 cats and three dogs. She has been published in Twilight Times, Dark Krypt, Fables, Writing Village, June Cotner anthology, The Grit, Reminisce and the book, Haunted Encounters: Friends and Family. She also does freelance work for Beyond.com, HealthcareJobsite.com and HealthcareJobsiteBlog

Medical specialists to quit over workload, pay issues

Fearing that they will make grave mistakes, a group of reportedly overworked medical specialists from Newfoundland and Labrador are planning to resign over the matter as they see no hope for fair compensation from the province. The thirteen specialists, upset with workload and staffing issues, have handed in resignations that will take effect Feb. 4th.

“This is not a job action,” developmental pediatrician Sandra Luscombe told a news conference Friday.

Many agreed that the province's two-tiered pay system for specialists is unfair.

“My resignation is not a negotiation strategy,” she said afterwards. “It's a leaving strategy” added general internal medicine specialist Julia Trahey, who says that she is so overworked that she is having recurring dreams that she is in front of a tribunal-like inquisition over a phantom mistake made on the job.

Are you looking for a better job in the healthcare industry? Take your pick at HealthcareJobSite.

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Bambi Blue is a freelance writer, editor, and codemonkey living in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. She moonlights as a jazz musician, a social butterfly, and most apparently a weisenheimer. Loves to cook, hates to clean, and can easily be found on Twitter.

The How, And Why, You Need To Embrace Social Network Strategies

Those working in the medical and health field have a formidable competitor these days when it comes to dispensing advice, insight and information about remedies and treatment: the Web.

As a recent article in the Charlotte Observer explains, patients are running to the Internet when they have a medical question, problem or issue and very often take online information as gospel, even when contradictory data is offered up by medical professionals during appointment times.

This means medical professionals are not only trying to educate patients about personal health issues, concerns and what to do, but have to make patients understand that Internet-info may not be all that reliable, trustworthy or factual.

So what can you do when dealing with this issue? Well first, says the article, you can refer patients to reputable and reliable sites such WebMD.com and tell them to make sure any site they use has the Health on the Net seal of approval.

The reason you don’t want to discourage patients from using online resources is simple: many people are already taking Internet data as pearls of wisdom to live by given a survey that shows Google searches come in second after meeting with a doctor on a medical concern.

What healthcare professionals may also want to do, and which could be a professional feather in the career cap, is talk to management and business leaders at their companies about doing some public service initiatives to help patients discern the fact from the false when it comes to Web research on medical topics.

Another potential way to help patients is to provide a social networking presence, whether it is a Facebook page or a Twitter feed, that lets physicians and medical staff offer up suggestions and insights about newly published materials and sites that can help patients make better decisions on care but always with the big caveat of attaining a medical professional’s advice of course.

Social networking efforts can be done without legal and liability issues coming into play, say experts, and provides a valuable add-on service that may make the difference when it comes to retaining patients and boosting patient rosters.

One good example in the article is a look at how the Carolinas HealthCare System has carved out a Facebook strategy that’s working and the challenges inherent in the social networking effort.


Looking for a new job in the healthcare industry? Check out the 226,947 jobs currently available.

By: Judy Mottl

Why IT Must Embrace Data Security In Pushing EHRs

It’s pretty much a no-brainer that electronic recordkeeping technology, once integrated and deployed, will save big amounts of time and money for medical and healthcare enterprises.

One industry report notes that digital health records could reduce costs in the U.S. by an estimated $80 to 100 billion every year.

But it also promises some big headaches for IT department tasked with managing, storing, protecting and providing access to the digital files.

So the IT professional’s role also includes making sure the data remains secure and confidential in nature, which means protecting users’ privacy.

Right now, according to a new paper from researchers at North Carolina State University's College of Management, that isn’t happening. The document, “Privacy and Security in the Implementation of Health Information Technology (Electronic Health Records): U.S. and EU Compared,” was co-authored by Janine Hiller and Matthew McMullen of Virginia Tech and Wade Chumney of Georgia Tech.

“Using electronic records allows the health-care system to operate more efficiently, minimizes duplicative testing, et cetera. But you can only get those cost reductions if everyone, or nearly everyone, makes use of the records, from health-care providers to pharmacies to insurance companies,” notes Dr. David Baumer, head of the business management department at NC State and co-author of the paper.

What’s needed in the U.S. is more public support about boosting privacy when it comes to EMR adoption such as what’s happening in the European nations.

“We are moving in the right direction in regard to putting better privacy protections in place, but we have a long way to go,” Baumer says in a press statement. “For example, approximately 50 percent of people in the U.S. have EHRs, but doctors will have to check for paper records until EHRs are so widespread that checking for paper records is no longer considered due diligence.” By way of comparison, approximately 95 percent of people in Holland have EHRs.

The paper offers up both technical and legal recommendations that could make EHRs more viable, including introduction of civil penalties if people share information inappropriately.




If you're thinking of moving into an IT healthcare job, check out this site for insight on what you need to know.

By: Judy Mottl