Awesome Transit Video Reminds of the Value of Online Learning

This astonishingly beautiful video shows a point of light for every piece of transit infrastructure (bus, train, taxicab) in the New York City area and its individual movement over a 24 hour period.  Watching the lights dance like choreographed fireflies truly impresses upon the viewer the extent to which we rely on transit to move us around the city for work and school.  If looking at this imagery makes you think of congested roads, bridges, tunnels, stations, platforms and terminals, you may be a prime candidate for online learning.  Leave the daily transit battle behind as you study medical billing and coding with the Allen School Online from the comfort of your own home or favorite local coffee shop.  Medical billing and coding is a great career option and while you’ll likely have to ride transit to and from your job once you’ve completed your medical billing and coding certification, the upside is, you’ll have a job skill that you can leverage to find gainful employment anywhere along the lines of transit outlined in the above video (and beyond)!

As of this writing, the Powerball Lottery jackpot is approaching $425,000,000.  An incredible sum to be sure and close to the all-time record for lottery jackpots.  Everyone you talk to has already bought a ticket for a chance to win the nearly unimaginable sum (yours truly included)!  However, the odds of winning are ridiculously low at 1 in 175 million.  Compare that to the odds of being struck by lightning in your lifetime (1 in 3000 chance) or the odds of being attacked by a shark (1 in 11 million) and you’ll begin to realize just how remote your chances for winning the Powerball jackpot are. Now for a much better chance at improving your financial position, you could enroll in CNA training courses at the Allen School.  CNAs or Certified Nursing Assistants, are in high demand as are most jobs in the medical field.  So the odds of you landing a good paying, stable job in a growing industry upon completing your CNA degree are immeasurably higher than the odds of winning the lottery.  In fact, it is nearly an “even money” bet that you’ll improve your financial health by pursuing a career in healthcare as a Certified Nursing Assistant.  But get yourself a Powerball ticket anyway, ’cause hey, you never know!

Allen School students of medical billing and coding, medical office assistant training, certified nursing assistant (CNA) training and all the staff and faculty have much to be thankful for this year.  For starters, we’re all involved in an exciting industry projected to continue its stellar growth over the next decade.  We’re also all involved in working toward the betterment of our careers, and the communities we serve.  Let’s take this time to also be thankful for our friends, families, and all the abundance we exhibit in our lives; abundance that will surely be increased even further by completing our studies in medical billing, medical office assistant and CNA training.  From all of us here at the Allen School blog, have a Happy, Healthy and Safe Thanksgiving!

There are a lot of myths patients will lean on when explaining why they aren’t planning to get an annual flu shot.  As a certified nurse assistant or medical office assistant, you’ll likely hear them all over the years you work in a doctor’s office or hospital.  I must admit that I, myself have used a couple of these in my cowardly efforts to avoid my annual meeting with the needle.  Now, you may think it wimpy of me (and others like me) who would rather risk suffering with influenza than get pricked with a small subcutaneous injection (and you’d be right).  But in reality, almost everyone is better off getting the shot if they can.  So, the facts needed to shoot down each of these persistent myths will come in handy for the CNA or medical office assistant. Some of the common myths include, “the flu shot isn’t needed every year” and “flu shots are only for the elderly or immune-compromised”.  You’ll also come up against, “I’ve already had the flu, so I don’t need the shot” and “the flu shot can give you the flu”.  For the arguments to pop these myths and many other “anti-flu shot” myths, read the article, Flu Shots Myths Busted by Lylah Alfonse.

With the aftermath of Sandy still fresh, New York is buckling down beneath the wicked chill of the season’s first Nor’Easter which is expected to dump snow on the same people struggling to dig out from under destroyed and damaged housing in the New York/New Jersey area.  If you’re studying to be a certified nursing assistant, you are developing a skill set that, even if you haven’t yet graduated, is very much in demand right now by your many of our neighbors.  If your housing situation wasn’t compromised and you’re a CNA training Allen School student, please consider volunteering in some of New York and New Jersey’s hardest hit communities.  Here are some links to organizations where your skills and knowledge of nursing and related topics can be put to exceptional use in this difficult time. Link 1 Link 2  

If you’re an online student of medical billing and coding via Allen School Online, and if you’re living outside the NY/NJ area, you may be wondering what you can do to help those students of Allen School’s ground campuses in the NY Metro area.  Many of our students and faculty live and work in some of the hardest hit areas of last week’s super storm.  If you’d like to aid in efforts to help recover from this killer storm, click here for a good list of organizations collecting donations to help hurricane victims. For those graduates of Allen School programs in such courses as medical office assistant, certified nurse assistant and others, please continue to support your local doctors and hospitals as they deal with the overwhelming influx of people needing critical care.  Together, we’ll all get through this difficult time.  If you know of any relief organizations or efforts in your local areas, please use the comments section here to get the message out to the Allen School community.

An innovative, new web start-up called Rewarder.com has recently been launched.  According to Wired.com,

“Rewarder co-founder Kendall Fargo had the idea to help people who, despite their best efforts, couldn’t find answers to their off-the-beaten-path problems online. ‘Everyone has personal needs and wants,’ says Fargo. ‘We all know someone is out there to help but don’t know where to find them ourselves.'” While you could use eBay and Craigslist to find collectibles, Ancestry.com for genealogy, and countless fitness sites for health advice, Rewarder is a one-stop-shop for advice and information from experts on all that and more.”

The site has attracted more than 100,000 experts in a wide area of subject matter, who answer your questions in exchange for a small fee (which many of them take in the form of Amazon.com gift cards.)  This may be an interesting opportunity for Allen School alumni who have earned their credentials as Certified Nursing Assistants and who have been in CNA positions in doctor’s offices and hospitals.  Share what you learned about the process of studying certified nursing assistant courses, and translating your certification into a rewarding career.  There are surely many people contemplating this path who would be happy to compensate you for your knowledge and perspectives on what it takes to become a successful CNA.  You could earn a couple extra bucks for sharing what you’ve learned!

If you’re an online student of medical billing and coding living outside the Northeastern United States, then you’re probably feeling lucky right about now.  For the rest of you taking medical office assistant training, certified nursing assistant courses or any other course of study at the Allen School campuses in the NY Metro area, you’re probably feeling less lucky.  That’s because ICYMI, a huge, hurricane-strength storm coming from the south is predicted to merge with a significant winter storm arriving from the west, to produce what forecasters say may be a storm of epic proportions.  They are saying damages could cost upwards of a billion dollars and leave the Atlantic coastal states without power for many days.  High winds, heavy rains, even snow are being called for.  If there’s one thing CNAs and medical office assistants learn, it is to be prepared.  With this in mind, your humble blog master takes this opportunity to remind you to be prepared for what could be a truly devastating storm.  If we’re lucky, it will turn more northerly and we’ll only get some wind and rain.  But better to be prepared for the worst case scenario.  Here are some links to pages containing useful information on how to prepare yourself and your household.  This one is from the National Weather Service.   Here’s another one from FEMA.  Batten down the hatches.  Frankenstorm cometh!