Burn-out and stress are prevalent among medical professionals, especially nurses and physicians, which is not a good trend for patients or for the healthcare system. Studies have shown that stressed out physicians make more errors, which causes more problems, and most likely leads to additional stress, in a vicious cycle. With an impending physician shortage, America cannot afford to lose needed physicians to career burn-out.

An article in California Healthline highlights a surprising potential remedy for preventing burn-out: volunteering. Apparently, working for free, providing medical care on a volunteer basis, may actually help you feel less stressed and be more productive at your "real" job.

The article follows a couple of physicians, an oncologist and a pediatrician, who are husband and wife. Together, the couple volunteer at a free clinic on weekends. It seems unlikely that doing more work can make people feel less stressed, but the physicians enjoy the different pace and appreciative patients. The boost the physicians get from helping those in need provides a lift that carries them through the hectic, demanding workweek.

What do you think? Do you think that doing more work, in a charitable capacity, could actually help reduce work-related stress or prevent burn-out? Take the poll and share your thoughts!

Related: How to Manage Work-related Stress

In addition to the medium-sized company list, Forbes and Indeed.com have also compiled a list of the top ten large companies that are hiring the most. They define large companies as those with more than 2,500 employees. On their list of ten firms, three are healthcare companies with hundreds of job openings posted currently!

Kaiser-Permanente has about 1,400 openings including jobs for nurses and phlebotomists. This healthcare company is based in California, but jobs are available also in Georgia, Colorado, Maryland, Ohio, Oregon, and Washington state as well. Approximately 180,000 people are employed by Kaiser-Permanente currently.

Catholic Health Initiatives currently lists over 800 jobs, including physical therapist and licensed social worker. Based in Denver, jobs are available in 18 states, among the 73 hospitals and 40 long-term care facilities the company operates.  According to the CHI website, CHI is the nation's third-largest Catholic healthcare system, with revenues of $8.6 billion annually. The system provided over half a billion dollars' worth of charity care in 2009.

United Health Group is the largest healthcare company on the list, and posts just under 800 open jobs, such as pharmacy technician, and many nursing jobs for a variety of nursing roles including RN (registered nurse), LPN (licensed practical nurse), and NP (nurse practitioner).

The remaining companies on the top ten list were not healthcare focused companies, but included IT firms, government and defense contracting firms, banks, and others. To review the entire top ten list, read the full article on the Forbes website. 

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What are the best medical jobs for women? That is a great question, and a popular one. Saying that a job is "great for women" is making a huge generalization about half of the population. There are so many different types of professional women who have individual needs and goals for their careers, that it is a challenge to generalize those goals into a list of best medical jobs for all women in general.

However, there are some jobs that are especially conducive to many of the needs that a large percentage of women in the workforce are seeking - such as flexible schedules, a positive female-friendly work atmosphere, fair pay that is equitable to men in similar roles, and advancement opportunities.

With those needs in mind, I've put together a list of some great career options for women who want to work in the medical field. After you review the list of "Best Medical Jobs for Women", please add yours below, and tell us why your addition is a great medical job for women!

When jobs are scarce, many go back to school. Colleges and universities typically experience an increase in applications for both graduate and undergraduate programs when unemployment is high. According to a recent article in Business News Daily, both the unemployed and underemployed contribute to the increased interest in higher education.

One website spokesperson interviewed in the article reports that pharmacology is among the top three most-searched education programs on their grad-school-focused website.  Pharmacologists help to develop, research, and test drugs used for medical treatment, dental care, or veterinary applications.

Another area of interest is the field of gerontology, involving care and services to the ever-increasing elderly population. Growing areas of the gerontology field include geron-technology, and "Aging Services Management", a new program offered at the University of Southern California-Davis. Geron-technology is booming as many high-tech products and services are being innovated for use with the aging Baby-Boomer population, such as monitoring devices, brain-exercising games and programs, motorized mobility equipment, and more.

Aging Services Management includes training in legal, healthcare, and financial issues for the aging, according to the report in Business News Daily.

More: How to Become a Pharmacologist

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