Great jobs in health care

With his home undervalued and his construction job on hiatus for more than a year, Gary Jefferson went looking for a sure thing.

"I'm tired of feeling that my life is out of my control, and the future is uncertain," the 30-year-old Las Vegas resident and father of two said. "I'm a guy who doesn't like surprises."

As the construction industry cut back on workers, he went looking for another job and was willing to put the time and money into retraining. His friends in the health care industry, from a home health care nurse to an X-ray technician, directed him to their field of work. It took him two tries to find a local vocational school that had room for him to enroll in the proper classes. He now is on target to becoming a front office administrator for a physician's office by the end of 2012. Meanwhile he is gaining experience working part time at a local chiropractor's office.

"I worked hard, and I believe I can rely on this (industry) to not go under while we as a country get back on our feet," he said.

Jefferson is on the right path, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Of the top 20 jobs expected to experience the most growth over the next decade, those related to health care are in the top five. As the U.S. population ages and baby boomers reach retirement age, health care is expected to receive a surge in employment opportunities.

Health care aides, nurses, trained medical office personnel and physical therapists are in high demand. Home health care in particular is a strong future employment opportunity, the BLS notes, and Kelly Services, an employment assistance service, agrees. Of its top 25 jobs expected to experience growth over the next year, Kelly Services found that more than half of those were health related, including services that support health care and mental health services.

The trend is good news, but potential health care employees should also be equipped with patience, passion and compassion, said Carrie Fulton, imaging facility manager and registered technologist for Desert Radiologists.

"The main part of my job is dealing with the patients, making sure they are treated well and taking care of their needs when they come in," Fulton said.

Fulton has worked for more than two decades at Desert Radiologists, which began serving Nevadans in 1966. Often patients come in to Desert Radiologists nervous or worried about the test and the outcome. Fulton's job is to not only do her work well so that the patient's physician can clearly diagnose a problem, but to take care of each and every patient's individual needs, both emotional and physical.

"When you have the customer leave happy, it just makes your day," she said, "particularly if they had walked in unhappy."

To calm them, she explains the procedure in detail and on their terms, as little or as much as they want to know.

"It's not so much on the medical side or explaining why they are there, it's more about the injections, what they will be going through, if they are going to have an IV, what that is like, or if they have barium, what to expect, just so they have a better understanding of everything I'm doing and are not surprised or scared," said Fulton, who has been a radiologist technologist for more than 24 years.

The job also includes the need to work with referring physicians and their offices, ensuring scheduling between the patient and the doctor's need for clear results.

"There are lots of things going on that you have to be in control and aware of," she said. "There's the test itself as well as the physician and the patient to work with."

Quality training is important, but it's a small part of the whole picture that makes her good at her job.

"You have to have passion, be able to deal with people," she said. "You really have to have a passion for being a patient care advocate because that is such a big part of the job."

Her patients range daily from the elderly to children and infants. She prepares for each patient based on his or her personal needs. It can be a juggling routine, but it's a part of the job she enjoys.

"If you don't have that desire to relate to people on a real personal level, it wouldn't be a good field for you because you are dealing with people on so many personal levels in so many ways," said Fulton, who received her associate degree at University of Nevada, Las Vegas and training at area hospitals before joining Desert Radiologists in 1987.

"Hospital training is the best training you can get," she said. "You can get training in a book but until you are in a hospital you don't understand the trauma and emergency situations that you, as a technologist, have to deal with. That's where you gain your most knowledge and it's great to do before you really start your career."

Desert Radiologists has recently expanded its businesses with an extensive partnership with Valley Hospital Medical Center.

"We are pleased and excited to be the exclusive radiology provider for The Valley Health System," said William Moore, Desert Radiologists' chief executive officer. "Desert Radiologists is Nevada's leader in diagnostic imaging and with the addition of Valley Hospital Medical Center, we reinforce our commitment to quality health care for the Las Vegas community."

They are currently accepting applications that are tied to specific openings.

"We would be interested in taking applications for per diem technologists, who are called in on an as-needed basis," said Kim Nagle, human resources director for Desert Radiologists. Go to Desertrad.com careers section for updated information. Technologists looking to apply must be registered with the American Registry of Radiologic Technologists, an international credentialing organization.

"You can't be registered without proper training, so it's important for us that they are registered with ARRT," Nagle said.

Desert Radiologists is also looking to hire in other areas of its company. It is one of the largest groups of physicians that provide diagnostic imaging to locals at its four outpatient locations throughout Las Vegas and Henderson. Desert Radiologists also provides radiology services for nine Southern Nevada hospitals and one Northern Nevada hospital.

"Frequently we have administrative or clerical positions open in our field," she said. "Those positions are more common as far as job openings so people should go online to check out what we have open at any given time."

Desert Radiologists has 275 employees, 88 of which are radiology technologists and 41 of which are physicians. The company's turnover rate is very low, Nagle said.

"We're a steady, reliable provider," she said. "We have wonderful benefits at our company and our employees are appreciated. It's a stable company. Anywhere you can work with a solid company it makes a person think twice before leaving."

While the aging population will increase jobs in the health care field, the field itself is undergoing a critical change as highly trained nurses with specialized concentrations are leaving the industry, said Laura Green, nurse recruiter and human resources analyst for University Medical Center.

"A lot of nurses are baby boomers and are retiring and those are the nurses that work in the specialty areas," she said. "It's very difficult to replace those people."

There are a few specialty positions that are continually difficult to fill, she said, and more so now that more nurses are retiring, particularly in critical care, emergency room and trauma areas as well as physicians and pediatric specialty positions. More than 45 percent of new graduates in the health care field in the United States are looking for jobs, and UMC hires more than most compared to the other facilities in town, she said.

"Training a new grad is expensive because they really aren't very productive for six months as they train," she said. "It takes that long to get their feet under themselves and not have the need for someone to always be checking on them."

The benefit of UMC hiring recent medical school graduates or those just finishing their degrees is that the individual is then tailored to the hospital's particular brand of medicine.

"We do a lot of training at UMC, a lot of training," she said. "If we can't find experienced nurses, we look for nurses that have at least one year of acute nursing experience. We bring them in for specialty training classes."

Each of UMC's specialty areas have training classes that are customized to the trainee's chosen area of nursing.

"The bottom line is that it is the nurse that gets you out of the hospital and works with the patient every day, and we take that very seriously," Green said. "Therefore we hire a high caliber of nurses with the proper training and if we can't find someone with the experience needed we take a great deal of care in training them for the specialties we need."

Schooling is important, to a degree.

"It's not just a science," she said. "You can go to nursing school and learn a body of knowledge and then you have to learn what to do with that knowledge."

That's where UMC steps in.

"You pick up the majority of your education in the workplace," she said. "In a hospital we have to keep the patient safe, that is our primary goal, so we do a very careful and extensive job in training and monitoring their training as we go along because we have to make sure the patient is comfortable and safe."

A new employee is assigned to work one-on-one with a nurse or comparable professional in the hospital to learn the specifics, from paperwork to supplies and hospital protocol.

"All of us who have been in nursing have learned our trade in those experiences and those experiences obviously shape us and teach us," she said. "Nursing is an art and you have to care about people."

After one year of training at UMC, the employee is cognizant of what they need to do as a nurse.

"Then they can concentrate on their specialty instead of the nursing job," she said. "New nurses have a hard time concentrating on what to do as their job when they first come in."

One size doesn't fit all for nursing.

"Nurses who work in intensive care and/or the emergency room would be lost in the OR (operating room), and vice versa," she said. "Just like a pediatrician doesn't deal with adults, nurses who are pediatric nurses only handle children. It's very specific training."

Green has been a nurse for more than three decades and plans on retiring this month.

"I'm very passionate about what I do," she said. "I've been an educator, a critical care nurse, a bedside nurse. The thing I will miss when I leave nursing is that I feel I really help people with their career choices. I get them in to something that is going to be a passionate career for them, because there are so many people who are out there who are unhappy in their jobs."

Go to www.UMCSN.com for a full listing of positions available, both for nursing and nonnursing. Green warns that you should be sure to read the requirements for particular positions as usually they're very specific requirements.

"I feel like I'm leaving a legacy," she said. "It's been a journey, but it's been a complete journey. I've been able to see from all ends."

Jobs have been plentiful at area hospitals in hard-hit Las Vegas, said Wayne Cassard, system director of human resources for The Valley Health System, which includes Centennial Hills Hospital, Valley Hospital Medical Center, Desert Springs Hospital Medical Center, Spring Valley Hospital Medical Center and Summerlin Hospital Medical Center.

"We've really never stopped hiring," he said. "Where a lot of companies have been affected by the recession, those types of things, we in the medical field really haven't."

There's always a need for health care, he said, particularly critical care nurses and technicians as well as pharmacists and pediatric physicians.

"We are always looking to hire," he said.

And he expects that to stay a solid trend over the next decade.

"If you look a the aging population, the baby boomers and people getting into retirement age when health care is needed more, there will be a larger demand over the years," he said.

To apply for positions at Valley Health Systems five area hospitals, go to www.valleyhealthsys.com.

"We expect to have positions open regularly," Cassard said. "It's a growing industry, and we're growing along with it."