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Valuable Way to Spend a Gap Year

Mapping your gap year? ACR Homes offers purpose with a paycheck

Are you a student in the medical field seeking to accrue active, authoritative patient care hours during your gap year — in a job that aligns with your personal and professional goals?

If so, working as a direct care professional (DCP) at ACR Homes may offer the perfect win-win solution. Not only can you accrue the key working hours needed to apply to a PA or similar medical training program, but you’ll be paid for your time, hard work and expertise while gaining real-world experience and learning important new skills.

That puts ACR’s program head and shoulders above less-personalized unpaid internships that require students to hold down second jobs to stay afloat financially.

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Here’s what you can expect during your gap year as an intern and DCP at ACR Homes:

A regular paycheck, with different compensation based on the shifts you’ll be working. Full-time employees are also eligible for benefits including health, dental and vision insurance; long- and short-term disability, life insurance and paid time off. NICE Healthcare is also offered FREE to all employees who are insured through ACR.

A work experience many employees report to be rewarding and meaningful.

The chance to experience a real-life job in the medical field and regularly interact with other key medical professionals, many of whom act as mentors.

The opportunity to participate in a completely customizable internship based on your career interests. Interns can design and conduct their own research projects, attend seminars and earn a letter of recommendation for future endeavors.

The opportunity to learn new medical skills at ACR’s expense. After training, our DCPs are able to perform many healthcare tasks that are not commonly performed by CNAs in hospitals such as sterile procedures, passing medications, and working with a variety of medical equipment.

The option of working different shifts, depending on your other responsibilities and commitments.

The chance to work for a company that was twice voted the No. 1 workplace (among large metro-area employers) in a Minneapolis Star Tribune poll of area employees.

“ACR actually paid for me to get trained in CPR, First Aid, medication administration and other medical procedures. Taking care of my residents these past nine months and building relationships with them has been the most rewarding experience in my whole 23 years. They are people I will think about and care for the rest of my life.”

- Payton Gilreath, who spent her gap year at ACR.

“The skills I learned at ACR really gave me an advantage over many classmates in medical school. I gained skills in teamwork, creative problem solving, dealing with stress and resilience.”

- Cory, a former ACR DCP.

“I mostly worked overnight shifts because I felt it made the most sense to ‘kill two birds with one stone’ and get paid to do my homework. I feel truly blessed to have stumbled across the ACR Homes booth during my undergrad, not knowing how important this job would become to me.”

- a psychology student who spent a gap year at ACR Homes prior to graduate school.

Sound like a great deal? For many career-minded grads and undergrads, it really is. For more information on how a gap year at ACR Homes can help propel you toward the next stage of your career — and maybe change your perspective at the same time.