Your company's on the skids, and your industry hasn't been this down-and-out in a decade or two. You're ready to consider a big career change, but most other sectors are suffering equally. Even the healthcare arena, one of the great growth industries of the '90s, must be on a ventilator by this point, right?

Wrong. As Baby Boomers march into retirement, their demands for high-quality healthcare promise to stimulate the industry for decades to come. And the healthcare jobs juggernaut powers ahead.

In June 2001, US hospitals were scrambling to fill 168,000 positions, according to the American Hospital Association. While overall employment fell by 0.2 percent from August to September 2001, hospital employment actually rose 0.4 percent, the US Bureau of Labor Statistics reports. Of the 30 occupations expected to grow fastest through 2008, a dozen are in healthcare or allied fields.

Here's the lowdown on the sweet spot for job seekers, a handful of healthcare occupations whose staffing shortages are particularly acute.

Nurse! Nurse!

The nursing crisis is the mother of all healthcare personnel shortfalls. Unfilled registered nurse (RN) positions have jumped from 5.6 percent in 1999 to 9.7 percent in 2001, according to the hospital association. The typical nurse is a middle-aged woman looking forward to retiring soon, perhaps to start another career. In response, Gentiva Health Services Inc. is offering incentives to former RNs to try to lure them back to the profession, says David Silver, vice president of human resources for the Melville, New York, staffing firm. Registered nurses earn an average of $44,470, according to a 1999 report by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Pharmacists

Drugstores and hospitals are fighting a talent war over pharmacists, and the drugstores are winning, says Jody Talbert, vice president of allied marketing for Martin Fletcher, a healthcare staffing company in Irving, Texas. The superior pay typically offered by drugstores is forcing hospitals to raise wages for pharmacists, who averaged $63,030 per year in 1999.

The Technology's the Thing

Rapid waves of innovation in medical technology are spurring the need for technologists whose specialties didn't even exist a few years ago. "We may be able to stop heart transplants and put in artificial devices instead," says Saul Wischnitzer, author of Healthcare Careers for the 21st Century. These patients will require the services of specialized medical technologists. Among more traditional medical technology fields, radiologic technologists earned an average of $35,510 in 1999; prosthetic technicians were worth $44,610.

Healthcare Information Systems

Corporate managed-care consolidations of the 1990s left a legacy of disparate information systems that must be integrated to improve patient care and protect the bottom line. And the 1996 Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act is forcing healthcare institutions to hire software developers and systems integrators to work even more intensively across computing platforms to protect the privacy of patient information, according to Robert Cimasi, president of Health Capital Consultants in St. Louis. Because the need is so great, "a lot of this is learn-on-the-job," Cimasi says.

How do you begin to map out a course for a radical change in your career? "You have to sit down, list your skills and see how you can transfer them to healthcare," says Shelly Field, author of Career Opportunities in Healthcare. But do keep an eye on your blood pressure; major life changes can be stressful.

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