Health Care Careers

Seven hot health care careers

Check out a list of some of the leading fields in health care for job security, including medical assistant, dental assistant, and more.

As year ends, mass layoffs at hospitals slow

The final months of 2011 brought a decline in the number of mass layoffs—when 50 or more individuals would lose their jobs, according to a report in American Medical News.

Layoffs in 2011 were less common than in 2009 and 2010, when the economic recession contributed to a record number of downsizings. These data suggest that the worst may be over, and some predict that hiring in the health care industry will increase in 2012.

In related news, check out an interview with Mary Wakefield, PhD, RN, administrator at the U.S. Health Resources and Services Administration, where she discusses health care workforce challenges and the need for a new model of health care delivery.

IOM to look at global innovation in health professions education

The Institute of Medicine (IOM) is launching a new Global Forum on Innovation in Health Professional Education this month. The intent of the forum is to convene stakeholders to illuminate issues in health professional education, and to support an ongoing, innovative mechanism to incubate and evaluate new ideas. This incubator mechanism will be four "innovation collaboratives," which will be multifocal, interprofessional and global.

This forum concept was raised in a report by the Lancet Commission: "National forums for professional education should be tested in interested countries as a way to bring together educational leaders from academia, professional associations and governments to share perspectives on instructional and institutional reform."

The idea for the forum was also inspired by "The Future of Nursing: Leading Change, Advancing Health," a joint effort of the IOM and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

The IOM will identify four university-based innovation collaboratives: one in the United States or Canada, one in Latin America or the Caribbean, one in Africa, and one in Asia. Each collaborative would each represent formal partnerships between at least three complementary academic institutions: a medical school, a nursing school, and a public health school (in some circumstances a different health professional school could be considered as an alternative to a public health school).

Each chosen innovation collaborative will undertake its own two-year program of innovative curricular and institutional development that specifically responds to one of the recommendations in the two reports noted above. This innovation would need to involve each of the three partnered schools.

Order your copy now of the 2011-2012 Health Care Careers Directory

The 2011-2012 Health Care Careers Directory is now available—be sure to order your copy now. This updated edition includes 8,400 health professions education programs in more than 80 different fields.

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