Miscellaneous And Off Topic Subjects

[AlabamAlum]

The wage-gap thing is overstated. At least that has been my experience.

The HR wonks at one of the medical centers I worked at did a wage study years ago. There was a disparity in that men made more annually, but amongst hourly workers, it wasn't due to some sort of institutionalized sexism. The men worked more hours on average. Why? Women took much more unpaid leave (due to maternity, for the most part) and signed up for much fewer extra or OT shifts. When some women were polled and asked why they didn't volunteer for OT shifts or extra work as often as their male counterparts, most cited family responsibilities as the reason.

This is, of course, anecdotal, so your mileage may vary, but I can see it being the case across other industries, as well. Now, is it fair that women give birth and are often saddled with carrying little Johnny to the pediatrician every other week and Suzy to ballet class and have to grocery shop and do a thousand other household tasks more often than many of their male counterparts? Probably not, but the point remains: the so-called wage disparity isn't due to overt sexism by most industries - at least now and in the recent past - there are real, common-sense reasons why women often make less.

[iam416]

Of course. Hilariously, snopes explain why the facts on Pocahontas are misleading by explaining lots of variables go into wages. Duh.

Men are 10X more likely to get killed on the job and 3X more likely to be injured. Why, oh why, do we not value men's lives the same as women's?????

[iam416]

That said, we ought to consider why women don't enter higher paying jobs at the same rate as men. In particular, I'll gladly see my tax dollars go to getting more women in STEM programs. But sheer wage discrimination? Well, not in any place I've ever worked.

[Da Geezer]

Peggy Noonan wins the Pulitzer

[Whitley]

Re on-line degrees. I'd be interested about the growth in the on-line education industry. I would think it is substantial. There's money to be made and not a lot of supervision of accreditation. I suspect on line offering for established universities are revenue streams. I'd be skeptical of even their quality and highly skeptical of offerings outside established ones.

Here's an example in my field of interest. There's been huge growth in the number of Nurse Practioners and Physician Assistants in the last 10-15y. Demand for them is driving the growth. Lots of schools added PA and/or NP curricula as demand increased. Frankly, these programs were big revenue generators.

I've seen the quality of clinical skills of these graduates from the various programs drop precipitously. There are not enough clinical training opportunities out there for programs offering degrees but they still get sent out the door to start medical practice. National certification varies and so does the requirements for state licensing.

The point is that I do a lot of screening of NP and PA resumes for job seekers. I reject a ton of them based on the lack of quality of the programs listed in their Educational Background sections. It's hard to find quality training with experience in the PA and NP profession. A lot of applicants and very few good ones. The good ones get jobs quickly and are usually hired practice to practice by reputation.

Hey maybe you can answer a question for me. Even when I have gotten interviews it seems like a long time between applying and being notified about an interview. Does it usually take several weeks to a couple months before an interview is set up?

[iam416]

In my experience, it was quicker. I'd do at least a phone interview within a short period of being notified. Probably around 2 weeks. Definitely not months. But, organizations move at their own speed, so it's definitely going to be uncomfortably long. I do remember that much.

Keep fighting the good fight, Whitley. I had to deal with it in the great housing crash caused by [poor people/rich people]. It sucked. Oddly, I think I ended up so much better off. An exception, I suppose. But, hopefully the same happens for you.

[iam416]

Susan Rice just 3 short months ago:

We were able to find a solution that didn’t necessitate the use of force that actually removed the chemical weapons that were known from Syria, in a way that the use of force would never have accomplished. … We were able to get the Syrian government to voluntarily and verifiably give up its chemical weapons stockpile.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2017/04/10/susan-rices-claim-that-obama-got-syria-to-verifiably-give-up-its-chemical-weapons-stockpile/?utm_term=.637f22abb3de

[Jeff Buchanan]

Hey maybe you can answer a question for me. Even when I have gotten interviews it seems like a long time between applying and being notified about an interview. Does it usually take several weeks to a couple months before an interview is set up?

I'll describe the hiring process for both mid-level providers (PA/NPs) and MDs in the medium sized affiliated practice I'm currently working in part time. Of note, our practice owner has not been incorporated into Northside Hospital - a large corporation with both inpatient and outpatient services. In doing this, the practice maintains a certain degree of control over how it is run. Hiring and firing is one of them. We don't have an HR department that we have to deal with. The only drag on our hiring process from interview to offer to practice is credentialing which can take up to 90d.

We post job offerings on a bunch of web sites. We field typically 200+ applications for a mid-level position, <50 for MDs and there's a reason for that not relevant to your question.

We have hard and fast entry level requirements for NPs/PAs that go beyond the training and licensing requirements posted in the job opening. If you don't list them in your CV submitted to us in response to the job opening post, your resume gets tossed - that sounds harsh and some people are a lot better than their resumes. Point is, you need to know how to construct a resume that is going to keep it from getting tossed at first look. Research the company that you are applying for a postion. This sounds like common sense but I can tell you the number of 7 page resumes that are full of misspelled words, punctuation and sentence construction errors and don't tell me much is pretty high.

For every ten resumes we look at, maybe one is going to make the cut. From receipt to decision to move on a candidate takes maybe 7-10d, no more. I send an email to the candidate telling them how great they are and are a perfect fit and ask them to verify their phone number so we can set up a phone interview. At this point, I'm doing more recruiting than I'm doing interviewing.

Once I get a phone number verified, I'll text the candidate. I want that person to reply immediately if not sooner. The ones that let the initial communication wait are, probably at this point, fishing for interviews. I want someone that is seriously interested in the position we have open.

Then we do a phone interview. I have a set series of questions I ask. Some of them are technical and can reveal the level of medical competence the candidate has. I'll ask if the interviewee has any questions - they better. A candidate's value rises if I sense they have a list and have thought about this interview and the work place to which they are applying.

Let's say we have 6 candidates for a PA/NP position from 200 applications. I can usually narrow that down to 4 from the phone interview. I rank those 4. We set up in person interviews that amount to not much more than a tour of the practice and a meet and greet. This is a personality interview. Does the person fit into our practice culture?

Assuming we find all 4 generally good guys/gals, we do serious background checks. I'm not involved in this. The practice manager is but I get the feed back. We've found, in our area of work, references are useless. What we want to know, and this is a matter of open record, any medical malpractice claims, dismissal for cause, criminal records, financial problems, etc. If our top 4 pass muster, we set up a working interview.

What this accomplishes is we find out if the candidate has a clue about using the EMR they have claimed they know all about. I will take them into a patient room, I'll do the HPI and the exam and lay out the Care plan. Then we leave the exam room, go to a work station and I ask the candidate to make the note and order treatment in the EMR.

What's interesting about this is that we can usually do a little hand holding and provide supervision for medical practice and since we've already screened out candidates whom we know from their CVs don't have the training and experience we are looking for, knowing how to rapidly achieve a degree of comfort with our EMR is really important.

The point is for you Whitley, that getting in the front door for an interview, phone then live, is hard. Your resume has to stand out, it has to contain the stuff your future employer needs and you find this out by doing research. You have to be good at interviewing and this takes practice. Finally, when you go live to the future employer's work site, don't be surprised that whoever is interviewing you is evaluating something you might be completely surprised about.

Like talent notes above, you cannot let disappointment discourage you. It's a process.

[Jeff Buchanan]

With the dissolution of previous requirements for ISPs to take precautions to secure your private information, your use of the web needs additional levels of security. This link is from a company, Malwarebites, that I use as one (I have 3 malware applications running) of my security measures. The link will take you to the article addressing the current vulnerabilities of your web browsing after the loss of previously applied regulations, and the home page has the link to install the extension for your browser - sorry Safari users.

https://blog.malwarebytes.com/security-world/2017/04/your-isp-browsing-history-and-what-to-do-about-it/?utm_source=double-opt-in&utm_medium=email-internal-b2c&utm_campaign=EM-B2C-2017-April-newsletter-issue1&utm_content=protect-yourself

[Jeff Buchanan]

Here's the link to the extension you can add if you already know about this.

https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere

[hack]

Thanks, Jeff. LOL at:

As an example, certain tech support scam companies prefer to draw their staff directly from complicit drug detoxes and rehabs, largely in order to ensure a compliant, desperate employee base. So the next time someone searches for help with an intractable heroin addiction, they might get targeted ads for unlicensed rehabs that come with a new job opportunity of scamming the elderly.

[Wild Hoss]

https://twitter.com/thepileus/status/851497970692390913

Hoss...


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[ame="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVQcXR2HVhw"]United Airlines Training Video - YouTube[/ame]

[Dr. Strangelove]

[ame]https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/851767718248361986[/ame]

It amazes me that no one can convince Trump that his diplomacy through Twitter is a bad idea. The Pentagon and State Dept. must pull their hair out over crap like this.

[hack]

LOL @ the Airplane clip. SO GOOD.

[Jeff Buchanan]

It amazes me that no one can convince Trump that his diplomacy through Twitter is a bad idea. The Pentagon and State Dept. must pull their hair out over crap like this.

FDR used the radio and Hollywood ........

I don't think that for Trump, this is so much about formulating FP in public spaces. I think, like FDR, its garnering public support for who he is and what he is all about.

Not only did he get a slight bump in his historically low approval rankings after the Syria attack but Americans were overwhelmingly in favor of what he did - optics.