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To
Your Health
The Bay
Area offers an array of opportunities in nursing and allied
health
By Richard
J. Berman
When most
of us think of the California gold rush, the image that comes
to mind is of a grizzled 49er trekking across the country
with a pickaxe to seek his fortune in the state’s silty
riverbeds. According to author and historian JoAnn Levy, however,
a large number of people in other lines of work – including
boarding-house operators, teachers and clerks – also
flooded into the state in the mid-19th century and created
the infrastructure to support Northern California’s booming
population. Among the earliest professionals represented in
this wave of migration were nurses, who provided medical care
to the miners as well as to residents of growing cities such
as San Francisco and Oakland.
More than
150 years later, nursing continues to provide excellent opportunities
for job seekers in the Bay Area. Of course, the profession
has changed somewhat since the 19th century, and today’s
nurses have an almost limitless number of career choices,
ranging from taking care of a single homebound patient in
a rural area to working in a fast-paced urban emergency room.
“This
is just a great time to be a nurse because you can pock and
choose what’s best for you,” said Cindy Johnson,
vice president of human resources at Stanford Hospital &
Clinics.” “The Bay Area is a very strong job market
for nurses because there are a large number of practice settings
in a small area. You see a lot of opportunities here.”
Like most
Bay Area hospitals, Palo Alto based Stanford is liking for
qualified candidates, including nurse practitioners, staff
nurses and nursing supervisors. Sutter Health, which operates
medical facilities in 20 Northern California counties, including
Berkeley’s Alta Bates Summit Medical Center and the California
Pacific Medical Center based in San Francisco, also has hundreds
of full-time and part-time nursing positions open. The good
news seekers is hat good jobs can often be found close to
home, making nursing an ideal career for working parents.
Sutter Health has openings in Antioch, Santa Cruz, Novato
and Greenbrae, and Kaiser Permanente is seeking candidates
in Vallejo, Sacramento, Hayward and Martinez.
Most nurses
gravitate to a single area of focus, such as new-natal intensive
care, obstetrics, emergency medicine and geriatric support.
Despite this level of specialization one of the benefits of
a career in nursing is that skills are often transferable,
making it easy to find a position with a mew employer or to
switch assignments within an organization. In many ways, this
puts nurses in the driver’s seat in terms of planning
their professional paths. The ability to change roles and
responsibilities is an excellent way to stave off boredom
or burnout, and it is not uncommon for nurses to move jobs
as their lives change. For example, many nurses shift between
full-time, part-time and on-call positions as their family
needs shift.
Johnson
points out that it takes more than a good salary to attract
the best nurses.
“One
of the reasons people work here is because of our flexible
scheduling,” which includes an option to work three 12-hour
shifts each week, she said. The company also offers health
coverage and other benefits to half-time nurses.
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