The Impact of Shift Work on Health

As medical staffs, you might get used to with shift work. This kind of work schedule is made to fulfil patient healthcare needs. So, if staying up late is part of your nursing jobs, you many need to beware on your health as it may increase disease prevalence.

Why might shift work increase disease prevalence?

Longer working hours and staying awake for many more hours each day is the main cause for the increment of any disease prevalence. This is because our bodies are no longer truly synchronized with their environment anymore.

Moreover, television, computers and longer hours have the same effect to what is referred to as “social jet lag”, as well as many new diseases and disorders that commonly found in Western societies.

In addition, shift work was noted by the authors to be linked with behavioral and lifestyle factors that are also known risk factors for certain chronic diseases. Various studies have shown that shift workers are more likely to have a high body mass index (BMI), to smoke and experience stress.

What can we do to protect shift workers’ health?

If you are one the people who like working shift can follow a number of these suggestions:

• On the last few days of an evening shift, delay going to bed and waking up by 1 or 2 hours. This should make it easier to adapt to a new shift schedule.
• Provide extra time to adjust to a new work schedule, but still take care on your time for sleeping.
• To prevent daylight and other light cues after finishing a night shift, you can wear dark glasses or special goggles.
• Be discipline on your sleep schedule every day of the week, even on days off, to help adjust the body clock with the work schedule.

From the suggestions above, having good-quality sleep is important to minimize any disruption to the body’s circadian rhythms. This is also the best way to keep your body stays healthy.

How to Manage Patients with Autism

Everyday doctors and nurses may face with different kind of people with different background. Not only different lives background, but you may also encounter patients with different health history. One of the examples is dealing with autism patient which may be one of the so many challenging medical jobs. If you have to manage patients with autism, you can read several information bellows:

Step one: Understand the Child

Prepare time for discussing about children’s condition. You can ask about child’s physical, emotional and mental abilities within minutes to their parents. Several questions that will be good to be asked before the medical visits are such as follows:

• Is the child verbal or non-verbal?
• Does the child follow simple commands?
• Does the child make eye contact?
• Respond to his/her name?
• How does the child behave or respond to touch?

Step two: Plan for the Health Care Visit

Do not put any unnecessary items from the examining or treatment area. You may need extra staff, if you know the child is aggressive. It’s important to make sure that the additional members are fully aware about the child’s condition.

Step three: Implement Behavioral Strategies

Due to patient’s special needs, you may need range of behavioral strategies to cope with this patient. You can choose another strategy if your first attempt fails.

• Imitation plus reward
  If you need to listen to a child’s heart, for example, demonstrate on a doll with a stethoscope, and then allow the child to imitate you. Reinforce the child with praise or a predetermined reward, such as a favorite toy.

• Token system
  Before a medical procedure begins, have the child select a desired reward. Give the child a token at certain points during the procedure, with the understanding that he/she must gather a set number of tokens to get the reward.

• Choices
  Children who are allowed to make choices often curtail or stop negative behaviors. The offered choices must be within the context of the procedure. For example, ask the child which arm to use for a blood sample.

• Distraction
  This strategy is often the most effective. Souders advises nurses to “give the child a good time. Get into a playful mode.” Try singing songs, reciting the alphabet, playing with toys or blowing bubbles during the patient’s visit.

Step four: Look for Physical Abnormalities

If a child is diagnosed for having autism, you may need to look for other illness that may occur because of autism behavior. The most often case are gastrointestinal disorders and nutritional imbalances. Remember to always great patience and understanding when you have to deal with this kind of children.

How to Become a Medical Laboratory Technician

Many people think that working as a medical laboratory technician is exciting, especially for introvert people who like to work behind the scenes, medical laboratory technician is one of the perfect jobs among so many medical jobs opts. A medical laboratory technician work as highly skilled scientists to performs tests that detect the absence or presence of disease. The minimum wage that could be obtained by a medical laboratory technician is $38,370 while a medical laboratory technologist could take home $59,430 per year. This job’s demand keeps growing day by day, if you are one of so many medical students who are looking for this job, you better read several requirements to be a medical laboratory technician, such as follows:

Education

A two year associate degree is required to hold the title of a medical laboratory technician or clinical laboratory. In fact, a job with the title medical laboratory scientist/technologist requires a bachelor’s degree. Candidates must obtain this education through a program accredited by the American Society for Clinical Laboratory Science (ASCLS). It is not difficult to find the training programs since it is available all over the country.

Training

The on-job-training will be given when the prospective technicians have attained training in the classroom. The training period depends on the employer’s policies and a technician’s previous experience and a healthcare or medical professional is the primary trainer.

Licensing and/or Certification

To be registered as a medical laboratory technician, one must pass a certain exam or undergo a certification process. Details should be obtained through the local state board or department of health. Moreover, besides having a license, it is a must to pass a national certification exam. But you could work as an internship or trainee position if you haven’t obtained a license yet.

Necessary Skills and Qualities

A good medical laboratory technician not only should obtain good technical skills to operate sophisticated biomedical instruments and to collect and analyze data, but also should have an eye for detail and follow directions very well since the accuracy of test results is terribly important to the patient and doctors.

3 Awesome Technologies that Will Make You a Better Nurse

With technology improvement, healthcare treatment has significantly changes into a better way through improved workflow and limited human error. Even technology has transformed medical jobs becomes safer and less physically challenging for both medical staffs and patients. Below are 3 technology advancements that surely will help medical worker, especially nurse to perform their works efficiently. These new technologies have been adopted in nation’s top hospitals; hopefully they are part of medical equipment in hospital that you work for, or you may search for hospital that provide better facilities and awesome technology for the sake of their staff and patient’s goodness.

Electronic Healthcare Records (EHR)

Hate it or love it, the days of endless paperwork, filling out patient charts, and having doctors will soon be gone, since those endless work will slowly be replaced with EHR, which allows healthcare providers to access patient information with a few keystrokes. Besides, EHR will reduce any human errors with an extensive patient history easily accessible and all in one place, alerts nursing staff to possible drug interactions, and keeps track of diagnostic test results.

Real Time Locating Systems

Medical equipment which has a good system of tagging and tracking can increase hospital efficiency. However, only few hospitals have acknowledged how important the hospital systems are, one of the good example is Texas Children’s hospital which has implemented real time locating systems (RTLS), as part of its system. This new systems makes it possible for nursing staff to locate the nearest blood pressure easily by using radiofrequency identification tags, ultrasound, and/or infrared. It may appear simple while it helps a lot to monitor bed management and patient care routines.

Better Diagnostic Tools

With new technology advancement, there are more options available now to perform minimally invasive test and treatments which will result in lower risk of infection, and hopefully can be more cost effective, for example nanotechnology in handheld biosensors that can detect a range of diseases from miniscule body specimens.

The 5 health care jobs that will Continue Raising

With our dynamic life, it will be difficult to predict which thing will rise and down, this also works the same in healthcare jobs. Some medical jobs sounds hot today, but it may sound dull or odd in the next ten years. So, in this article we are going to give you hint of 5 health care jobs that will continue raising, at least for the next 10 years.

• Physical Therapy Assistants/Aides

Physical therapist assistants aid patients who are recovering from injuries and illness regain movement and manage pain, but their work should follow their supervision of physical therapists. To be a physical therapist, one must obtain an associate’s degree from an accredited program to enter the profession. Moreover, one may need to be certified or licensed to enter all states. A physical therapy assistant will acquire median annual pay $ 41,640.

• Home health Aides

This profession seems like growingly needed since home health aides work to help adults or other individuals with physical or cognitive disabilities to perform their daily activities right on their home. This job doesn’t require any educational requirements. If you are interested to be a home health aides, you will obtain annual pay for $21,380.

• Audiologists

With the growing of an aging population with hearing disorders and improved survival rates for premature infants, trauma and stroke victims, the demand of audiologist is increasing. Audiologists usually work in hospital settings but some also work in schools, doing early intervention hearing tests for children. An audiologists will acquire annual pay $73,060.

• Optometrist

Optometrists diagnose and treat diseases and injuries to the eye and other parts of the visual system. They also prescribe corrective lenses are needed. Most optometrists obtain a bachelor’s degree and then pursue a four-year specialized doctorate degree in optometry. An optometrist will usually get $101,410 as annual pay.

• Nurse Anesthetists, Midwives and Nurse Practitioners

Nurse anesthetists, nurse midwives and nurse practitioners are a specialized level of nurse referred to as advanced practice registered nurses. This kind of job may require advanced registered nurses to have a master’s degree in their area of specialization since they will provide care to patients undergoing anesthesia, pregnant women, and etc. The salary of nurse anesthetists is around $102,670.