When hiring your first employee as a small business owner, it is important that you find someone who fits your business’s culture. Your  employee is the first person you trust to support your mission and the first person who acts as a voice for your company. To continue growing, recruit and retain an employee who has the right talents to help your business succeed.

2017 is upon us! That means now is the time to develop your marketing plan for the new year, so you can hit the ground running on January 1st. We’ve put together some tips for creating your marketing strategy.

According to the Institute of Medicine (IOM), 30% — $750 billion — of the annual U.S. healthcare budget is wasted on unnecessary services, excessive administrative costs, inefficient delivery of services, and prevention failures. To say that healthcare professionals and patients are frustrated would be an understatement. Fragmented care, barriers to patient access, ineffective management of chronic diseases, unnecessary use of Emergency Department visits and a lack of proper aftercare have all contributed to the fraying of the current healthcare system, leaving patients to fall through the cracks.

Updated Nov. 9, 2021

In recent years, the medical community has discovered more about the previously poorly understood connection between the digestive system and mental health. This concept is broadly known as the gut-brain axis, and as a healthcare professional, understanding it is key for helping your patients recover and thrive.

Here, we go in-depth on what the gut-brain axis is, its effects on mental health, and how you can use your knowledge of that connection to help your patients in almost any healthcare position.

Sterile processing technicians help keep patients safe from infection in hospitals, surgery centers, and doctors’ offices across the country. These healthcare professionals take care of operating rooms, surgical instruments and other tools to ensure they stay clean and infection-free. Though the job is crucial to patient safety, it comes with unique challenges.

Sterile processing technicians perform a vital, life-saving role within hospitals, surgical centers, and doctor’s offices. By ensuring a sterile environment and tools, sterile processing technicians prevent the spread of infections and keep patients and other healthcare workers safe.

In a world where having the appropriate personalized protective equipment (PPE) is crucial to helping patients survive, sterile processing in the healthcare setting is more important than ever before. However, it might not be a job the average individual thinks about, and that's precisely why it's every bit as pivotal as the roles patients see on the frontlines.

When one of your employees is delivering a sub-par performance, you need to have a difficult discussion. Talking to employees about bad performance can be uncomfortable, but having a script for bad performance reviews can make your job easier and give your employee the best chance at improving.

October is American Pharmacists Month and what better way to celebrate than to recognize your favorite pharmacy technicians on October 18. Now is the time to spotlight the people who make valuable contributions to the practice of pharmacy day in and day out.

Innovation is a big word. It probably conjures up ideas about expansive R&D departments at corporate powerhouses like Apple and Google, but the truth is that innovation is imperative to businesses of all sizes in the 21st Century. The terms “innovation” and “small business” are no longer independent of each other.

Tammera J. Karr teaches the Holistic Nutritional Therapy module in the Functional Nutrition program at the Institute for Health Professionals.