Health Care Careers

What should you look for in health care careers? What do the changing trends tell us about the future of nursing careers? In the next decade or two, it might look very different from what we see today.

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Looking Forward: Health Care Careers and the Future of Nursing

With new technologies, advancements in drugs and treatments, changes in healthcare policy, insurance policies and coverage, it it likely that the healthcare profession including nursing would have to reinvent itself. As an example, as technology continues to advance many health care careers and functions can become automated. These include patient records, medical documentation, and use of smart beds used to monitor patients' vital signs, more use of bar coding, and automated medicine carts which could be used to cut down time and reduce errors that result from dispensing medical drugs. In addition, voice-activated technology can be used to reduce the amount of written documentation. Tasks such as serving meals can also be taken over by trained medical aids in order to free up nurses to provide the human touch to their patients.

As a result of nursing shortages, healthcare facilities will be forced to use their nurses judiciously. Nurses will spend more time at the bedside as educators and care coordinators to refocus on the patient. With the lengths of patient stays shortening, nurses will have to make the best use of a shrinking amount of time hospital stays. Nurses will also spend more time in administration and supervision positions. They will need to know how to access knowledge and transfer it to the patient and their loved ones.

The changes in technology will possibly attract more men and minorities into health care careers. Greater emphasis must be placed on supporting teaching careers and recruiting educators from diverse cultural backgrounds to relieve the serious shortage of nursing school faculty. Therefore, more loans and scholarships for master's and PhD nursing programs would also have to be in place, and the colleges would have to pay the instructors more money.

As far as trends go, if the nursing stuff shortage continues, long-term hospital stays may have to be reserved mainly for the very ill. This then means that the number of outpatients will increase, and subsequently the need for more home health nurses. Nurses will also serve more important roles in insurance companies, healthcare technology and software companies, and consulting agencies.

In the future, nurses will also be involved more in community health and population-based healthcare. Their jobs will include risk identification and establishing priorities for at-risk populations. These health care careers workers will also serve as community educators, with training in health care careers, who also work with insurance companies and healthcare providers to develop programs aimed at promoting health and saving the patient money and reducing cost for the health care institutions.

Medical personnel who work in gerontology and geriatrics, for example nurse practitioners also face what would be considered a bright future in terms of their careers. With people in the baby boom generation reaching retirement medical professionals will be required to focus on patients in this generational group. Further, nurses who are also baby boomers might not be ready to retire and may find themselves in a role of consulting. They would serve as healthcare providers who they themselves understand the needs of their patients better.

As medical research and technology advances, nurses will focus considerably on prevention rather than treatment. Further, medical drugs that target diseases before they start, and identifying risks will also enhance preventative healthcare. This will require patient to take a more active role in learning about taking better care of themselves to prevent illness. This healthcare shortage and the cost of healthcare will also add pressure to the healthcare system to concentrate prevention and wellness models of care.

Despite what the future holds for the medical profession, nurses and other healthcare workers need to prepare for changing trends and for their evolving roles. In addition to remaining lifelong learners, they will be part of the transformative future of healthcare and medical care. But as you can already guess, this is far easier when one is passionate about their chosen health care careers.