Urgent care facilities operate similar to a primary physician’s office other than the fact that your primary care provider knows your medical history. Urgent care is used for those who cannot get an appointment with their doctor and isn’t life-threatening. One of the main benefits is they are open for extended hours, and most are also open on the weekends.
Urgent care facilities hire a variety of medical care staff. These include physician assistants, nurse practitioners, nurses, and other technicians needed to help with various needs. Many of these clinics are owned by a physician instead of a large corporation, ensuring that you get the best short-term care available. Urgent care is run by doctors making specific skills essential when looking for a qualified employee.
Below you will learn 5 essential skills you need to perfect to get hired in an urgent care facility.
1. Ethical Reasoning
Ethical reasoning is the process of determining why the choice you make is moral. A lot of times, you will find that there is no clear-cut answer when making this choice. This is why this process is so important. When determining which option is the better one, you take clear notes to explain how you reached the conclusion you did.
An example of an ethical dilemma in healthcare is doctor-patient confidentiality. There are times when withholding information can harm the patient or another person but also violates HIPPA. This is one of the gray areas when using ethical reasoning is essential.
2. Leadership
At one point or another, you’re going to be the one others turn to for advice. No matter what type of position you are looking for, you will be responsible for guiding the staff. Having good leadership skills is not only handing out good advice of the do’s and don’ts but also means that you lead by example.
This skill will be necessary for an urgent care facility because you will be in charge of many employees, from the receptionist to the x-ray technicians. You will need to earn their respect to feel motivated to do what you ask them instead of resentful. There is a vast difference between fear and leadership. Leadership supports and motivates your team, while fear causes low job satisfaction and a high turnover rate.
3. The Ability to Think on Your Feet
While working in urgent care, you have no idea who will walk in the door next. It could be as easy as someone needing blood work or as complicated as someone having a heart attack. The differences are so varied that staff needs to know how to handle each situation with the same level of care.
Similar to thinking on your feet, you will need to be comfortable with making decisions. This means when talking to families, you can explain your choices to family members who disagree with your preferences. There will be times when you have to instruct your team on what they need to do, or you may disagree with one of their decisions. You need to talk to them about why you disagree and why your choice is best.
4. A High Level of Professionalism
You are likely going to face times when you don’t want to be professional. This is pretty much guaranteed when working with the public. People who are stressed, sick, or impatient can become rude, verbally abusive, and you may even run into someone who is combative. These times are going to test your patience. Even the most experienced doctors will find these situations difficult.
A few different situations you may experience in a day.
- Embarrassing medical issues or symptoms
- Patients from a variety of different backgrounds
- Patient outbursts
- Emotional disorders or psychiatric disorders
5. Strong Listening Skills
Patients can give clues to their symptoms without realizing it; this is why physicians need to have strong listening skills to pick up on this. They may have come in with reoccurring headaches that won’t go away, and they casually bring up they recently fell. This is an essential piece of information that can help determine why they are experience headaches.
Strong listening skills also will come in handy when trying to settle disputes between co-workers. When people work together for long periods, conflicts will come up. You need to be able to listen to their complaints and then suggest ways to resolve the dispute.
If your dream is to work in urgent care, you need to develop the necessary skills. Some skills required are not skills you can learn in medical school but are developed throughout your life. Most likely, if you chose to be a doctor, you possess some, if not all, of the skills listed above.