Recruiters’ Knowledge 101

When researching the business of medical recruiters, you’ll often see the position referred to generically as a “travel nurse recruiter.”

What’s more, RTG Medical and its competitors are sometimes referred to as “travel nursing agencies,” and the health care workers themselves are often referred to as “nurses.”

While it may be simpler to think of things that way, a quick look at our openings shows positions like histologist, sterile processing, speech language pathology, vascular sonographer and medical laboratory technician, along with many specialties of nursing.

So really, there’s a lot more to the recruiting we do than just nursing.

If you want to be an effective recruiter for RTG Medical, you have to quickly become familiar with all of the different types of fields that we recruit for. From radiology, to therapy, to laboratory positions, we fill all sorts of positions–not just nursing–all over the 50 states.

Here’s a brief introduction to some of the fields we’re referencing:

• Radiology. Radiology involves the use of imaging technologies to diagnose and/or treat disease. These technologies range from X-ray radiography, to newer procedures like ultrasound (sonography), computed tomography (CT or CAT scanning), nuclear medicine, positron emission tomography (PET) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). A radiologist, radiologic technologist or radiologic technician interprets the images and produces a report of their findings to help in diagnosis. By the way, a radiologist is a medical doctor, and “technologist” and “technician” are not synonymous; a technologist actually has more education and a greater level of responsibility than a technician.
• Therapy. Although the term “therapist” is commonly associated with psychological therapy, therapy actually refers to treatment of a multitude of both physical and psychological conditions. Types of therapy include physical therapy, drug therapy, occupational therapy, preventive therapy, supportive therapy and many more. Therapists are usually identified by their specialty (physical therapist, occupational therapist, speech language pathologist) or certification level (certified occupational therapist assistant). Most of the therapy positions placed through RTG Medical will be within the fields of physical therapy, occupational therapy and speech therapy, but as a recruiter, you will place others from time to time.
• Pharmacy. Pharmacists and pharmacy technicians both dispense medications, plus interact with patients, prescribing physicians and insurance companies. Pharmacists counsel patients and physicians, and are also responsible for overseeing the work of pharmacy technicians. Both pharmacists and pharmacy techs can be placed in retail pharmacies, clinical pharmacies, and care facilities. As a recruiter at RTG Medical, you may occasionally find yourself working on the placement of specialty positions like nuclear pharmacy and home infusion/chemotherapy.
• Laboratory. A medical laboratory or clinical laboratory is a facility where tests are done on clinical specimens in order to get information about the diagnosis, treatment and prevention of disease. Laboratory technicians aren’t likely to have much, if any, direct patient interaction, but they are an important part of the health care continuum and as an RTG Medical recruiter, you will sometimes place health care workers in these positions.

While the majority of the recruiting work that we do is for traveling nurses, it would be incorrect to assume that everything we do revolves around nurses. On occasion, positions like the ones we’ve discussed above do show up, and as a recruiter, it’s essential to know the terminology so that you can work effectively.

If you have any questions about this post, or want to know more about being a recruiter for RTG Medical, feel free to contact us in the comments or on Twitter. We’d love to hear from you!

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