The 3 Priorities to Achieve Balance for a Happy, Successful Life

By Nan McAdam

I have worked in the business world for many years. The saddest thing, I have witnessed, is to see someone who has work very hard, spending the majority of their time creating a successful career. They finally reach that pinnacle of success in their career that they were striving for and they look around and that's all they have. Their marriage and family is gone, kicked to the curb by over focusing on their career. They had lost all sense of balance. They have achieved the dream career, but their life is in ruins.
Some people, actually, use the above scenario as an excuse to not succeed. They don't want to put in the time and hard work it takes to succeed because they don't want to lose what is precious to them. I believe you can have it all. Does that sound impossible? I have witnessed it. I know many successful people who have grabbed the brass ring in their career and have a solid life with their partner and kids. Don't get me wrong. I have witnessed plenty of the first scenario. It is challenging, to say the least, but it can be done!
If someone achieves their dream success in their career, but loses their family and is spiritually bankrupt, are they really successful? Creating a successful life begins by prioritizing the important things in life. The successful people, I have seen, prioritize their top three things in this order.
1. Spiritual - they have an active relationship with their God or what ever they call their creator. They model their lives by the laws and teachings of their spiritual faith. I don't believe that a certain religion creates more successful people. They may not even be affiliated with a religion. Successful people realize there is something larger than themselves. They acknowledge it and worship in their own way. Their communication with their spiritual side is their first priority. Face it, faith and hope come from a strong spiritual connection.
2. Family - isn't this who we are working for? If we really prioritize our families we will find the time to spend with them. The time might not be quantity, but it should be quality. Four hours of watching TV with the wife/husband and the kids is not quality time. The key is, the time you spend with them should have all your attention. Schedule them in your planner and keep that appointment no matter what crisis happens at work. If we have a great career but lose the closeness with our spouse and children, what have we gained? When we always short change our family for our career, they aren't really the priority they should be. Our families should be our "why" for success. When we move into the winter of our lives, our families will be the ones who keep us warm.
3. Business - I am not naive enough to believe, when creating a successful career, we will always be in balance. Project deadlines and business growth accelerations can take us out of balance. When this happens, communication with our top two priorities is in order. Our family, will understand short changing their quality time only if it doesn't become the norm.
It is fun and exciting to build a successful career! It should be the monetary means to build a successful life, not the life.

job, jobs, career

Medical Transcription and Scribes

By Kathy Nicholls

The use of scribes has been a topic of discussion quite a bit lately, so I thought it was time to talk about it here and see what your thoughts are.

If you're not yet familiar with the term, a scribe is a person who goes into the exam room with a physician and does the documentation on the patient visit into an electronic record, using a laptop or some type of portable device. It's being sold as a way for physicians to get their information into an electronic record quickly and a way to reduce costs.

Scribes need to have an understanding of medical terminology so that the documentation is correct. They also need to be able to work with the technology that is being used, although, like medical transcription, I imagine systems will vary from provider to provider. My ophthalmologist has been using a "scribe" in his practice now for more than ten years, so I sometimes chuckle when I hear people talking about how new this practice is. Or perhaps he is jut ahead of his time.

The reports I've seen show that scribes tend to make a starting wage of $8 to $10 per hour. It is also reported that while some of the people doing this job have some medical background, many times they are trained from scratch in training programs that take six to eight weeks to complete. Most of the information shows that scribes work for a company, who then contracts with the healthcare facility to provide the services. These companies are charging the healthcare facilities $20 to $24 per hour for the scribe services.

Is this an opportunity for medical transcriptionists? Perhaps. Medical transcriptionists certainly have the skill set necessary to perform this function. While many will protest the pay, remember that these scribes are working for a company, or a middle man, who has to "upcharge" the healthcare provider in order to make money. How would that change if you went directly to a healthcare provider and offered those services?

What do you think? Is a scribe a potential future role for people with medical transcription training?

job, jobs, career

How To Not Ruin Your Best Resume

By Suzette Dean

For fresh graduates, having the best resume is a big issue. They consider it their key to getting hired by a reputable company. This is actually true since they have little or no work experience. Because of this, many struggle to make the best resume. However because of lack of knowledge and information sources, many are not able to achieve the goal of making the best resume and end up with an average resume instead. But what should a resume really include for it to be the best resume?

First of all, the best resume should always include your educational attainment. Whether you are able to go to a university or just high school, educational attainment should always be included. Why? Since you are a fresh graduate, and have little or no work experience yet, employers will base their decision on the school that you have been to. For most companies, the standards of the schools can help them determine the capacity of the applicant.

Second, the best resume should contain activities that were work-related or internships. This is also important because they could use your internship experiences to determine your working capacity - whether you are hard working or not, if you have perseverance or not, or whether you are determined or not. These qualities are very important for companies because they would want their employees to be efficient.

Third, the best resume should contain any training and seminars that you were able to attend. Why is this important? Training and seminars will definitely give you additional knowledge that you will not be able to learn from the four walls of the classroom. Training and seminars that are written in your best resume will of course give you an edge compared to other applicants who were not able to undertake such privileges.

You see - writing your own best resume is not that hard. All you need is focus and the proper tips of course. Remember, flooding your resume will not make it the best but instead will make it look like a logbook. Choosing the right information to include in your resume is very important so as to not flood your resume. Impressing the employer is the goal, but being able to write the best resume by yourself will not only impress the employer, but give you satisfaction because your hard work paid off in the best way.

job, jobs, career