Career Planning in Health Care

Introduction

The career planning is referred to the ongoing process in which personal interest, as well as abilities, are explored to strategically plan career goals for creating a successful work designing and actions plans for achieving the goals. There are different career opportunities being available in the health and social care field which required effective career planning for successfully accomplishing the role and responsibilities under them. In this report, in relation to career planning an outline of the range of occupations in the health and social care sectors is to be highlighted. The way skills regarding the occupations are to be researched is to be discussed. Further, hierarchy of a typical health and social care organisation is to be mentioned and the importance of hierarchy in terms of role and responsibilities are to be explained.

Range of Occupations in Health and Social care

The key range of occupations present in the field of caring for the chronically ill patients in the Health and Social Care sector include nurses, doctors and health visitors. As mentioned by Cramm and Nieboer (2015), nurses are those who are trained to care for the sick or ill people. The nurses who are attending the chronically-ill patients in the health and social care sector have the key role in their career to identify and assess the health status (physical, psychological and emotional) of the patients. Moreover, the nurses who are attending the chronically-ill patients require to develop an individual care plan for the patients to help them to manage pain, maximise their independence, improve health functions, developing strength for coping strategies and others (Linden and Butterworth, 2014). The nurses in this field of health and social care require developing proper follow-up care and recommend treatment intensification in case the patient has not achieved their health goals.

The Doctors working to attend the chronically-ill patients in the health and social care sector has the key role in this career to monitor as well as provide specialised care to the patients to help them cope with the chronic disease. They need arranging admission of the patients requiring special care by investigating their chronic illness so that effective treatment can be offered to them for assisting the patients to reduce painful and distressed feeling due to chronic illness (Hanghøj and Boisen, 2014). The Doctors in this field also have the role to examine and communicate with the patients for effectively diagnosing their medical condition. They have the role to promote health education and supervise the junior doctors in the process to ensure p[roper care and treatment of the chronically ill patients.

The Health Visitors are the midwives or nurses who have the passion to promote healthy lifestyle and prevent illness by visiting the homes of the chronically-ill patients or the parents who have very young children (Goeppel et al. 2016). They have the role to advise the family members of the chronically-ill patients as well as the patients regarding the way they are to manage and keep the physical environment of their home to prevent further health deterioration of the patients. In this career, the Health Visitors have the role to identify any sign of concern or risk factor within the home to safeguard and protect the well-being of the chronically-ill patients.

Demonstrating the research skills in researching careers

The research regarding career in any field is important for varied reasons out of which one reason is to understand the compatibility of the chosen career. As mentioned by Dennery and Ryan (2017), while researching about a career the job duties, skill requirement and work environment to be faced are understood. This helps to identify whether the career is compatible with one’s skills and personality. As argued by Hüttges and Fay (2015), a career that is not compatible with a person’s skill or personality makes them unable to work efficiently in the field. This is because the lack of compatibility with the person’s personality and skills makes it hard for the individual to work to deliver tasks as per their role and responsibilities. As asserted by Jones et al. (2017), research about career is important to understand the educational skills and work experience required to excel in the field. This is because without proper education and work experience one cannot develop and be proficient in any career. The research about career helps to identify the nature of salary to be received and other consideration to be made to identify if it is the right choice as per the expectation of the person.

In order to develop information regarding a career, the first method is to search in different online and offline platforms about the occupational options available related to the educational degree held by the individuals (Woolley et al. 2016). For this purpose, various websites such as Prospects UK, Graduate Careers, LinkedIn and others are to be researched. This is because they are going to inform about the wide number of occupational opportunities available for the degree held by the individual. As commented by Comeau et al. (2018), the individuals to chose the right occupation to require to research about the occupational information for the shortlisted occupations they have determined. The information requires including duties and roles, labour market information, personality requirement and related course for the chosen occupation or career. The sources such as Job Guide, MyFuture and other sources can be researched for this purpose. In order to determine the specific career to work, industry information is to be gathered by researching various online websites, company data, newspapers and others.

Outline of hierarchy in Health and Social care

The Hierarchical structure of a typical care home in the Health and Social care sector is as follows:

Board of Directors: The Board of Directors are the individuals in the top position of the care home who identify and understand the desire and needs of the service users to be provided to them to make them feel dignified, achieve better health outcome, develop empowerment and others (Wiley et al. 2015). They also inform about the goals to be fulfilled by the staffs in the care home for providing best quality care services to the service users.

Dietary Manager: The Dietary managers are those who have the role to ensure proper food and supplements are provided to the service users in the care home by following the nutritional principles and food safety regulations. They direct their subordinates who are cooks and food service workers to ensure proper nutrition to the service users (Parsons et al. 2017).

Housekeeping Manager: The Housekeeping Manager has the key responsibility to ensure the maintenance of hygienic and clean environment within the care home by the help of the housekeeping staffs. This is required to ensure the prevention of spreading any disease through contact between service users and offer a clean physical environment for the service users to live in the care home (Ajlouni et al. 2015).

Business Office Manager: The Business Office Manager is the individual who has the duty to organise meeting and manage databases, deal with complaints and queries if the service users and their families, supervise and monitor the administrative staffs, manage proper business promotion and coordinate of the care home and others. The administrative workers of different department work under their supervisions to ensure positive business image of the organisation in the health and social care sector (Stall et al. 2014).

Safety and Maintenance Manager: The Safety and Maintenance Manager at the care home is the individual who has the key duty to ensure proper structure of the building of the care is kept in a good way so that accidents can be avoided. They have the role to ensure safe environment of the care home and avoid any nature risk through proper management due to hazardous substances or incidence to protect the staffs and service users in the organisation (Walker et al. 2016).

Nursing Director: The Nursing Director is the individual who has the key duty to supervise the nursing staffs and look after patients as well as execute administrative functions such and keeping records of patients, budgeting and others (McGilton et al. 2016).

Activities Director: The Activities director has the key role to arrange activities according to the need and demand of the service users in the care home to ensure their good health.

Importance of hierarchy in roles and responsibilities

The role and responsibilities are influenced through a hierarchy by providing the duty to the managers in the health and social care organisation to maintain, supervise and manage proper administration and working activities for delivering quality services to the service users. The hierarchical role and responsibilities in a healthcare organisation are important to establish a systematic way of delivering quality care services to service users to fulfil the aim of providing them improved health outcomes. The individuals present in the top position of the hierarchical structure of the healthcare organisation develop contracts of employment for the recruitment and selection of subordinates to inform the subordinate employees about the roles and responsibilities to be performed by them while working in the organisation to ensure they follow the rules of the organisation (Lau et al. 2015). Moreover, the hierarchical structure helps to develop a proper professional code of conduct to be followed by each employee that ensures ethical services by the organisation to the service users. As mentioned by Dumitrescu et al. (2018), proper hierarchy of the organisation is required to ensure effective delegation of tasks. This is important as it ensures all the needs and demands of the services users are fulfilled by delegating work among employees according to their skill and position to accomplish the tasks without work pressure on single employees or subordinate groups. The hierarchical structure of the healthcare organisation helps to execute effective actions by the top management for whistleblowing to resolves issues and wrong doing within the organisation (Jones and Kelly, 2014). This is because as the information regarding wrong doing flows from the workers to the management in an ascending order in the hierarchy effective strategies are taken at each step to control the situation so that the care service quality to the service users are not hindered.

Conclusion

The above discussion informs that Doctors, Nurses and Health Visitors are the key occupational careers in the field of health and social care where care services are given to chronically-ill patients. The research regarding career is important to understand the compatibility of the occupation with the individual. The research is to be done through searching career information in online and offline sources regarding the educational degree, education and working skills, etc held by the individuals. The hierarchical structure in the care home in the health and social care field includes Board of directors, Manager, subordinates and others. The specification of role according to hierarchy is important to ensure proper professional code of conducts are maintained, delegation is executed, employment contracts are made effectively and others.

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