Starting Your Own Dentistry or Optometry Practice

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Starting Your Own Dentistry or Optometry Practice

Unlike many careers, dentistry and optometry offer considerable flexibility for the practitioner to go solo or join a family practice. Owning your own practice offers independence and greater financial rewards. But the effort comes with considerable responsibilities that drastically change the career experience - budgeting, client development, facilities and equipment leasing. The skill set can get even more harrowing if you decide to purchase an existing practice - how do you value the practice? how do you protect yourself from liabilities of the existing practice?

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Think Twice about Working for These Dentists and Optometrists

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Think Twice about Working for These Dentists and Optometrists

Every state has some regulatory body that oversees dentists and optometrists, imposing fines and penalty where warranted. Much of that disciplinary action is transparent and easily accessible.

Below we provide some links to sample regulatory bodies for a handful of states. We encourage you to identify through a simple Google search the regulatory organization of the state relevant to you and investigate any practitioner that you are interested in.

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Glassdoor

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Glassdoor

What it is:  Glassdoor is a top job and recruiting site. It maintains a large database of company reviews submitted by job applicants and current and former employees. The company reviews link to Glassdoor’s searchable job listings to make it easy for a job seeker to do their company research.

Why it Matters to You: Glassdoor is admittedly a review system, not a ranking. Site’s users rank biotech & pharmaceutical companies on a scale of 5. The user input is compiled by Glassdoor, yielding a score and is very handy for specific company research as well as comparison with pharmacy peers. Glassdoor’s reviews include management approval, salary and benefits reports, and company culture.

Considerations:  While it can provide very insightful information, Glassdoor is not a scientific survey and should be viewed as more a “word on the street” reference. That said, Glassdoor is the clear leader in user-submitted rankings. It often synthesizes dozens or even hundreds of reviews, thus mitigating sampling size bias, e.g., where one or two disgruntled employees can through off an entire ranking system

Created By:  Glassdoor

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NursingSchoolHub.com

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NursingSchoolHub.com

What it is: Nursing School Hub is an educational resource for aspiring nurses. Its website covers educational programs, career guidance, and current industry issues.

Why it Matters to You: Nursing School Hub offers several rankings, beyond just “traditional nursing schools.” It also offers rankings of time online programs, top progressive nursing schools, and most affordable schools.

Considerations:  While many of the rankings are based on Nursing School Hub’s own analysis, some rankings pull heavily or entirely from other ranking systems, e.g., their top best traditional nursing schools is admittedly a reiteration of U.S. News & World Report.

Created By:  Nursingschoolhub.com

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Top RN to BSN - Nursing Programs

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Top RN to BSN - Nursing Programs

What it is: Top RN to BSN is an online information source for current and prospective nursing students. It provides career resources, including a list of the best nursing academic programs.

Why it Matters to You: The RN to BSN list offers a profile of each of its top nursing programs along with a direct link to the hospital homepage. Each profile summarizes hospital achievements and employee experience.

Considerations:  For its residential program ranking, RN to BSN looked at statistics provided by the National Center for Education Statistics which is part of the U.S. Department of Education. Each of these factors is equally weighted. We only consider schools that are fully accredited by the nationally recognized Commission on Collegiate Nursing Education (CCNE).


For its online program ranking, all colleges and universities ranked are regionally accredited, and their nursing programs are accredited by the Commission on Collegiate Nursing Education (CCNE), the American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN), or the Accreditation Commission for Education in Nursing (ACEN). All are ranked by U.S. News & World Report for added reputability. In addition to reputation, we considered affordability (based on Non-Resident tuition) and perceived success (based on alumni salary data gathered from the Department of Education’s College Scorecard website). All metrics are weighted evenly.

Created By:  Top RN to BSN

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Nurse.org

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Nurse.org

What it is: Nurse.org is a resource website for nurse practitioners and aspiring nurses. The site offers a range of content including a blog covering current events, a career guide, job listings, and links to scholarships. 

Why it Matters to You: Nurse.org’s Hospital Reviews score hospitals on a scale of 5 stars, with 5 being the highest. The Reviews section does not rank the hospitals. Rather each hospital must be researched independently

Considerations: The reviews offered by Nurse.org are not supported by many submissions so it is not a sufficient sampling size. As such, the reviews as more useful as a reference than a determinative. The true worth of the website is in the career resources it offers. 

Created By:  Nurse.org

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American Nursing Credentialing Center

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American Nursing Credentialing Center

What it is: The American Nursing Credentialing Center maintains its highly distinguished Magnet Recognition Program which designates organizations worldwide where nursing leaders successfully align their nursing strategic goals to improve the organization’s patient outcomes. The Magnet Recognition Program provides a roadmap to nursing excellence, which benefits the whole of an organization. To nurses, Magnet Recognition means education and development through every career stage, which leads to greater autonomy at the bedside. To patients, it means the very best care, delivered by nurses who are supported to be the very best that they can be.

Why it Matters to You: The Magnet Recognition Program is considered one of the highest awards for nursing excellence. Its website includes both domestic and international awardees.

Considerations:  The Magnet Recognition Program is based on five outstanding organization attributes: transformational leadership; structural empowerment; exemplary professional practice; new knowledge, innovation, & improvements; and empirical quality results.

Created By:  American Nursing Credentialing Center (ANCC)

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Top RN to BSN

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Top RN to BSN

What it is: Top RN to BSN is an online information source for current and prospective nursing students. 

Why it Matters to You: The RN to BSN list offers a profile of each of its top 30 hospitals along with a direct link to the hospital homepage. Each profile summarizes hospital achievements and employee experience.

Considerations:  To rank the 30 Most Nurse-Friendly Hospitals in the US, TopRNtoBSN editors researched the hospitals across America that have earned accolades for being some of the best places to work as a nurse. Our sources include U.S. News & World Report hospitals rankings, the National Database of Nursing Quality Indicators, ANCC Magnet Recognition, and various other awards.

Created By:  Top RN to BSN

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Student Doctor Network (SDN)

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Student Doctor Network (SDN)

What it is: Student Doctor Network (SDN) is a non-profit created to help build a diverse doctor workforce by providing free advising resources and peer-support to “those who would otherwise not have access to such services.” SDN brings together thousands of current and future healthcare students and professionals into one community where they can share information, offer guidance, and provide encouragement to their peers and those coming up behind them. Its nearly 700,000 members spans from high school students to attending physicians.

Why it Matter to You: SDN ranks medical schools on a scale of 5 stars, with 5 stars being the best. It is not very clear how the ranking is determined, although it appears to be based on surveys submitted by website users. The ranking is searchable by SDN score; location; accepted MCAT (or PCAT for pharmacy applicants); accepted GPA

Considerations: SDN is a great resource to get “street level” intelligence on medical school admissions and student life. By reviewing a specific school profile, the user will be able to get detail on the school application process and interview, including specific questions that were asked during the interview and interview stress level.

Created By: Student Doctor Network (SDN)

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QS World University Rankings

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QS World University Rankings

What it is: QS World University Rankings is produced by Quacquarelli Symonds, a British company specializing in education. The ranking lists schools from throughout the world, enabling a comparison of U.S. schools to those abroad. It is the only international ranking to have received International Ranking Expert Group (IREG) approval.

Why it Matter to You: Schools are ranked based on an overall score. The components of that score can be broken out by the user to enable an issue specific analysis. Those components include academic reputation; citations per faculty; and employer reputation. For each university listing, the user can view trend lines going back several years that provide insight to school progress.

Considerations:  Data sources from across the world are not necessarily uniform. This can impact the accuracy of the comparison analysis. Also, several of the score components are reputation-based which may or may not crossover to reputation in the United States. You need to research deeper the impact of a foreign-education on your marketability in the U.S.

Created By:  QS World University Rankings

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Ranker

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Ranker

What it is: Ranker is a digital media company for opinion-based, crowdsourced rankings. It ranking system is based on real-time votes from the Internet community.

Why it Matters to You: Perhaps more of a reference ranking than a definitive one, Ranker does allow the user to review how males vs. females perceive schools as well as reviewing voting by age group.

Considerations:  Ranker’s lists are composed from data collected from online polls; e.g., psychographic profiling. It’s data is regularly cited in the media, including The Wall Street Journal, Business Insider, The Hollywood Reporter, and USA Today, among many others.

Created By:  Ranker

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U.S. News & World Report

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U.S. News & World Report

What it is: The well known U.S. News & World Report publishes its list of best medical schools annually. 

Why it Matters to You: The annual database is searchable and user-friendly. Users can search for ranking for research or primary medicine, and further filter for specialty type, e.g., surgery or internal medicine. Users can also review the annual full-time tuition and enrollment numbers.

Considerations: In order to be eligible to be numerically ranked, a medical school or osteopathic school needed to have full accreditation. Of that pool of 185 schools, 120 responded and provided the data needed to calculate the rankings based on the indicators used in the medical school research model. Criteria for ranking included research activity; student selectivity; and achievement of graduates.

Created By:  U.S. News & World Report

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Great Place to Work

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Great Place to Work

What it is: An annual ranking of the best workplaces in health care and biopharma. Great Place to Work’s data is the underpinning of Fortune’s ranking, so the two are very similar.

Why it Matters to You: Great Place to Work is a global people analytics and consulting firm that helps companies of all sizes produce better business results by focusing on the work experience for every employee. 

Considerations:  More than 95,000 US employees provided input to this year’s Best Workplaces in Health Care and Biopharma list. Great Place to Work analyzed each company’s performance on over 50 survey questions anonymously rated by their staff. All employees were invited to participate in the survey, which is designed to reveal whether the organization is consistently a great place to work for all its people.

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Fortune

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Fortune

What it is: Fortune produces a list and profiles of the Best Healthcare companies to work for. The list is not a hospital pure play. It includes biopharm as well as services such as hospices and clinics.

Why it Matters to You: To compile this list, Fortune partner Great Place to Work interviewed thousands of staffers about their jobs. The top companies get the highest marks for work/life balance and whose employees actually love coming to work.

Considerations:  There is not great transparency in how Fortune scores the surveys used to build its list. Nor is the list a searchable database. But it does provide great indicators that you should look for in choosing your workplace.

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Becker's Hospital Review

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Becker's Hospital Review

What it is: Becker’s Hospital Review is an extensive and well-established publication that extends to a broad scope of coverage, including healthcare news and analysis, commentary and strategy from industry leaders, best practices and business guidance, and lists of noteworthy healthcare institutions and people. 

Why it Matters to You: Becker’s website is a great resource for health care trends and current leaders, although it may be initially overwhelming. A great first-place to stop is their lists section which has a wealth of superlative categories.

Considerations: Becker's Healthcare selected the following hospitals for inclusion based on analysis of ranking and award agencies, including U.S. News & World Report's rankings, CareChex, Healthgrades, CMS star ratings, Leapfrog grades and IBM Watson Health top hospitals. Becker's also sought nominations for this list.

Created By: Becker’s Hospital Review

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Healthgrades

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Healthgrades

What It Is: Healthgrades ranks the top 250 hospitals in the country categorizing them into 3 different tiers - top 250, top 100 and top 50.

Why It Matters To You: The ranking system is categorized by state and offers a rough comparison to other hospitals, identifying the top 1% and top 2% tiers.

Considerations: This ranking system is based solely on “clinical quality outcomes” over several years and provides a measure of consumer confidence. As such it is largely patient-outcome focused rather than evaluating the hospital as a workplace or employer.

Created By: Healthgrades

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U.S. News & World Report

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U.S. News & World Report

What It Is: An annual ranking of hospitals in the country. The ranking is limited - it does not score every hospital in the United States, just the top performers.

Why It Matters To You: The most widely referenced ranking, U.S. News & World Report offers ranks including overall, regional, specialty ranking, children’s hospitals, and surgical procedures.

Considerations: The ranking is consumer-focused so weighs heavily towards patient care (as opposed to employee satisfaction, financial strength, etc.). Scores are based on several factors including survival, patient safety, and nurse staffing. A formal methodology report can be downloaded.

Created By: U.S. News & World Report

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