The Results-Oriented Healthcare Workplace

Healthcare jobs, whether nursing, laboratory or administrative, are involved in a lot of detail. When healthcare people are so engrossed in the details of their jobs, it's easy for them, for anyone actually, to lose sight of the job's major contribution.

A Results-Oriented Healthcare Job Description is different from a traditional job description because it focuses an employee on the several job results that answer the question: What results must this healthcare affairs job accomplish for the organization?

Healthcare Job Standards added to job expectations tighten management controls by clarifying how well and when results must be accomplished.

Healthcare Job Objectives establish management and employee plans by highlighting important current and future results needed.

Job-specific Healthcare Employee Management Forms maintain consistent and legally sound management actions by basing manager-employee interactions on job results.

The Purpose of Healthcare Jobs

Stated in a results-oriented, three-line style, healthcare affairs jobs--

DELIVER HEALTHCARE SERVICES by

understanding and evaluating client issues; establishing healthcare objectives; defining healthcare interventions; providing physical, emotional, psychological, and spiritual support to clients, families, and friends; instructing clients, families, and friends to understand client conditions, medications, and self-care skills; noting changing conditions and needs; re-evaluating care objectives.

Types of Healthcare Jobs

Many healthcare jobs provide direct services to clients-nurses, therapists, technicians and specialists from all areas of medicine and care. Other jobs work more in the background, such as conducting tests in laboratories, maintaining medical records, filing insurance claims, assisting in surgical suites, and filling prescriptions in the pharmacy.

Still other jobs maintain the facilities by sanitizing and keeping areas, clean, maintaining equipment, environment and grounds, and testing and repairing biomedical equipment.

Somebody needs to administer programs, plan facilities, publicize events and service, keep track of costs, and training personnel. And, of course, somebody has to manage and supervise the healthcare people and processes.

Healthcare Job Management Tools

Here are actual job examples of how healthcare affairs job actions can be focused on results and kept on track using each of our job management tools:

Results-Oriented Healthcare Job Descriptions form the foundation of all job management tools. Our uniquely structured job descriptions focus on the result to be accomplished first and prominently, followed by the duties performed in order to accomplish the result. For example,

RECOMMENDS HEALTHCARE ACTIONS by

analyzing system controls.

Healthcare Job Standards sharpen employee attention and management control by defining and communicating how well the healthcare affairs results must be accomplished and what benchmarks will be used to measure job results. For example, for the job result above, the job standards might be:

• Healthcare situations are correctly understood.
• All options are identified and evaluated.
• Healthcare recommendations are ready when needed.

Healthcare Job Objectives point the direction for employee actions by focusing job efforts on current and future healthcare affairs issues. Job objectives are written in the three-line, results-oriented structure. For example, for the job result above, a job objective might be:

SPEED-UP DECISION MAKING by

reducing time to deliver healthcare affairs recommendations by 10% by (date).

Healthcare Employee Management Forms tied specifically to each healthcare affairs job description are more helpful (and legal) than generic forms used for all different kinds of jobs. Job-specific forms are used to state job qualifications, guide job interview questions, orient new employees, plan job training, and appraise job performance.

Healthcare Job Qualifications are stated in the same terms used in the job description. They are not translated into generic (typically behavioral) terms. For example:

RECOMMENDS HEALTHCARE ACTIONS by

analyzing system controls.

Healthcare Job Interview guide questions are inserted directly below each job result in the job description: For example:

• "What specific job responsibilities have you had in this area?"
• "Where did you have these job responsibilities?"
• "When did you have these job responsibilities?"
• "How did you go about accomplishing these responsibilities?"
• "What accomplishment in this area gave you the most pride?"
• "In this area, what were some of your biggest challenges?"
• "How did you overcome the challenges?"

The Healthcare Job Orientation guide reformats the job description sequence so that job explanations, policies, protocols, processes, and procedures are logical and complete and can easily be checked off. For example:

RECOMMENDS HEALTHCARE ACTIONS by

analyzing system controls.

The manager might say: "Here's the procedure and format we use to analyze and present healthcare affairs recommendations."

The Healthcare Job Training plan guides a thorough examination of actual job knowledge, skills, and abilities as described in the job description that need improvement or that might be enhanced. For example:

RECOMMENDS HEALTHCARE ACTIONS by

analyzing system controls.

The manager might say: "Analytical skills would be improved by enrolling in a statistical analysis class."

The Healthcare Job Performance Appraisal guide is a job-specific form. It is not a universal form used for all jobs. The guide adds an appraisal scale below each job result in the job description so that attention can be drawn to each job requirement and expectation. For example:

RECOMMENDS HEALTHCARE ACTIONS by

analyzing system controls.

__ Great! Just want we wanted.
__ We have a problem.
__ Improvement is needed.
__ Much, much more than we asked for.

Comments: _________________

Healthcare Résumé Template

Potential employers want to know what a job applicant has accomplished in his/her healthcare affairs work career. They don't want to be bored with minor details. Our Résumé Template provides:

• an outline to help assemble personal background information.
• a Results-Oriented Job Description to provide the healthcare affairs job language-focused on results-needed to write an effective résumé.
• Healthcare Job Objectives to orient thinking in terms of accomplishments.
• instructions on how to use a Results-Oriented Healthcare Job Description and Healthcare Job Objectives to express job accomplishments.

Use the healthcare affairs job description responsibility statement as a base:

RECOMMENDS HEALTHCARE ACTIONS by

analyzing system controls.

Select the healthcare affairs job objective that fits your experience:

REDUCE COSTS 10% by

improving healthcare affairs processes.

Combine the two into a résumé statement:

Reduced costs 10% by analyzing, identifying, and recommending new healthcare affairs system controls.

Healthcare Career Links

ExploreHealthCareers.org

Free, multi-disciplinary, interactive health careers website designed to explain the array of health professions and provide easy access to students seeking information about health careers. This website is a joint initiative involving national foundations, professional associations, health career advisors, educational institutions, and college students. Includes career explorer, personal profiles, articles, issues, links.

Biomedical Engineering Society, Careers

What is a biomedical engineer?, specialty areas, future demand, preparing for a career, degree differences and opportunities.

Department of Health and Human Services, Research and Training Opportunities at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Virtual Career Center

NIH is the primary Federal agency for conducting and supporting medical research.

American College of Healthcare Executives, Careers in Healthcare Management

International professional association of healthcare executives.

U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Health Care

Training and education needed for jobs in healthcare, earnings, expected job prospects, what healthcare workers do on the job, and working conditions.

Career Voyages, Healthcare

Collaboration between the U.S. Department of Labor and the U.S. Department of Education to provide information on high growth, in-demand occupations along with the skills and education needed to attain these jobs.

CareerOverview.com, Healthcare and Medical Careers

Non-commercial website dedicated to providing aspiring career professionals and students with relevant, reliable and up-to-date career and job information whereby helping them to make better, more informed career choices.

New Jersey Hospital Association, Center for Nursing and Health Careers

News and information, nursing opportunities, nursing education, allied health education, financial aid, licensure and certification, resource links.

Healthcare Careers, Explore a Career in Healthcare

Information resource for education, training, and schools in the medical and allied healthcare fields.

ThinkQuest.org, Healthcare Career Resource Center

A site assembled by two students who were browsing the web looking for information on medical careers and could not find one central clearinghouse of resources.