Entry level health care job??

chorkle · Sep 15, 2010

Hospital--

Unit Secretary on any nursing floor.

Registration clerk in E.D.

These have been entry points to prereqs, then nursing school, at local community college. Hospital I left recently, offers sliding scale tuition and books reimbursement (running 2-year employment commitment).

You will note that some hospitals have some openings restricted to current employees. Where that is the case, some have suggested any job in the hospital can be a starting point--such as housekeeping.

STARRACHELLE · Sep 15, 2010

Thanks for that! Would you suggest I go into a hospital to inquire? Im not sure how to go about it...Ive checked availability of positions on hospital websites..however none are available on there....

chorkle · Sep 15, 2010

Without knowing the concentration of hospitals & other health care facilities in your area--

If you have time, some hospitals, at least, post openings outside the HR Dept.; so if you can find that--walk in the main entrance & ask where HR is--no one will think the slightest about this common request.

If you are outgoing & personable (that's not me!), when you're in the hospital, you can make an instant new acquaintance of any employee who appears to have a moment, and just ask. (If you're a FT retail manager, you must have some level of stage presence.)

And if you're a FT retail mgr., AND doing prereq. courses, you may not have time for this suggestion, but . . .

One hospital situation that will nearly always accept you is the Volunteer Dept. (altho I have heard of hospitals which, in the current recession, say they have all the volunteers they can handle). Even a 4-hour Sat. or Sun. situation would be a start. Two potential problems with this idea--Vol. Dept. tends not to staff weekends; they very often seem (to me) to mimic the 'suits' schedule--M~F only. The other thing is, volunteers often don't get to do much more than deliver flowers and mail to patient rooms--just as an example. What you (would probably) want is smth that takes you all over the whole hospital--allowing you to get to know as many people as possible. Examples--just being a gofer, in all its manifestations; delivering packages, mail, odd bits & pieces, from here to wherever they need to go; conducting walk-in outpatients to departments--Lab, Radiology, etc.; conducting visitors to patient floors--don't just tell them how to find the elevators, TAKE them there (if that's your hospital's philosophy), even right to the patient's room. Among other things, you want to acquire an intimate knowledge of where EVERYTHING in the hospital is. (Meet more people, if nothing else.) In some hospitals, volunteers assist patients being discharged off the floor, and out to the car of the person taking them home.

An ideal (to me) situation would be, being a Sunday afternoon volunteer in the E.D. You wouldn't be allowed to get near anything which could be called patient care, but you could clean & change rooms between patients; be a guide to visitors; stock rooms with supplies; minor cleanup; be a gofer for anything needed from anywhere; run urgent samples to the Lab; etc., etc. If you find smth like this, be cheerful, enthusiastic, and SUPER helpful--which will get you to the point they NEED you every Sunday afternoon. (Meet more people, who can do more for you.)

As Jack Canfield said in a long-ago tape series, to get what you want, you have to ASK, ASK, ASK, ASK, ASK, ASK, ASK, ASK, ASK, ASK, ASK, ASK, ASK, ASK.

Hope there are some useful ideas here.

mariposabella · Sep 15, 2010

That was helpful to me! I have been wanting to work in a hospital too.

becky3vb · Sep 15, 2010

I was in a somewhat similar situation a couple years ago.

I volunteered for 4 hrs/wk at a local hospital to gain some experience while I was working in a retail store. I found all of the information on the hospital website and called the volunteer coordinator. They required a committment of 6 months/100 hours of service to let you volunteer, so that they didn't have people coming and going all of the time. I was placed on a med/surg floor and got some basic hands-on patient care experience.

I later found out that the nearby university teaching hospital accepted people as patient care techs if they had a bachelors degree. I have a bachelors degree, but definitely not in a medical-related field. I thought I would try anyway and luckily got hired. After I was hired, my boss told me that they "jumped on my application" because I had that volunteer experience. (I'm not sure why he told me, but he said they had over 50 people apply for the job.) I know of several people who have gotten hired as PCTs on other units with just a bachelors degree, CNA, EMT, etc.

Definitely check the websites of your local hospitals, urgent care centers, and clinics to see if they have any voluteer, secretary, or tech positions available. Even a little patient care exposure can make a huge difference in your application! For one of the schools I've applied to, experience gets you 3 "bonus" points on your application which could make all the difference.

BEST OF LUCK!!

chorkle · Sep 15, 2010

Congratulations to becky3vb! Excellent plan, well-executed.

Another thought--In some hospitals, patient transport is a separate dept. (In others, it may be a subset of Radiology, say, or smth else.) I think it's unlikely to be routinely operated by volunteers, bec. of the liability issue.

But, being a patient transporter would/could be another hospital entry to where you're headed. It would get you exposure to almost all nursing floors, as well as most ancillary depts., incl. some you might not have thought of--Dialysis, e.g. Don't be concerned about physique--a patient who can fit into a wide-bodied wheelchair can be managed by not-so-muscular folks of slight build--provided they don't expect you to get the patient into and out of the wheelchair all by yourself. OK, an 800-# patient in a bariatric bed is a rather different matter, but help will be available. (If the patient needs to be somewhere else, no help is available, and they expect you to do it--help will become available.)

Even just the exposure to widely-varying patients, wheelchairs, stretchers, and hospital beds, will be valuable experience. Think PATIENT! Focus your attention there. (Not just safety)--Is the patient chilly? You may be comfortable in short sleeves in your over-air-conditioned hospital. Your older patient probably is not. Ask. Get a blanket or two from the blanket warmer, and show your solicitousness in wrapping up your patient. Taking a patient in the hospital bed from a darkened patient room to Radiology? Think about how brightly lit the hospital corridors are, and provide your patient a made-up-on-the-spot sun bonnet--a towel from the linen cart, folded & placed gently over the upper part of the patient's face. I do this sort of thing, ALL the time. (I don't see many other folks doing so.)

Smth I should have said in earlier post--when you get that volunteer spot, or whatever you find, be enthusiastic and all that--but do more, take advantage of the situation you're in. Talk to the nurses you work with, let them know your interests. Same thing with the floor charge nurse, and the dept. manager. (This can be done gently and effectively, as well as coorificely and abrasively--I've observed both, and areas between.) Probably not on your first day there. And always volunteer to help a nurse with anything s/he's doing--often it's smth you might not be allowed to do, but help turning a patient, cleaning up a patient, or helping hold a patient in a necessary position for some procedure, is always welcome--and experience for you. And be sure to express your interest in just observing what's going on, being done--but not to the exclusion of getting useful work done as the volunteer you are there--if that's the situation.

Carefully and effectively working all the contacts you'll develop there--you may well be the first to learn of an opening--a PAID position!--at the hospital, maybe even before it gets to HR.