Are you a recent school leaver trying to work out your next step? Or perhaps someone who has been in the workforce for a while but knows they’re ready to try something new? No matter how far along you are in your career, it’s always worth considering numerous job pathways so you can find the best fit for your goals, personality, strengths, and more.
If healthcare has always appealed to you, you could investigate the following job options. These are trending careers that look set to keep providing growth opportunities over the next decade.
Medical Assistant
Becoming a medical assistant may work well for those unsure about what type of health specialty they’re most interested in or would best suit or for people who like to keep their options open and try various things over the years. Medical assisting is a fantastic way to get your foot in the door and obtain a comprehensive health-based foundation.
Almost every type of medical facility you can imagine, such as hospitals, clinics, research bases, and more, need medical assistants. Anywhere that doctors get hired, there are usually assistants, too. If you have a passion for service, enjoy working with people and continually learning new things, and like job variety, this career could suit you nicely. You can specialize in one area of assistance, such as in pediatrics, oncology, neurology, or cosmetic surgery, or move between different sectors.
You’ll find many excellent studies to undertake to help you get a relevant job, too, such as a medical assistant program in Phoenix or those you can enroll in for online study, no matter where in the world you live.
Home Health Aide
Another career option to consider is becoming a home health aide. With an aging population, fewer people with children to look after them as they get older, and many chronic injuries and conditions requiring care no matter the phase of life, there will always be a need for those who can assist patients in their own homes.
Home health aides can handle numerous household tasks, such as washing clothes, preparing and cooking meals, cleaning, and the like, as well as care administration, including bandaging cuts and scrapes, washing people, handling medication, and more.
Pharmacy Technician
If you’re not so keen on the potential of seeing blood or any other potentially confronting hands-on patient care, a great job option for you may be as a pharmacy technician. In this line of work, you will work with pharmacists to help them find, dispense, pack, and label prescribed medications and chat with customers about how to take medications or answer questions that arise.
You may also handle a variety of administration tasks, like paperwork sorting and filing, ordering inventory, unpacking, checking and putting it away, processing insurance claims, etc. Pharmacy technicians don’t just work with traditional chemists, either. They also get positions in nursing homes, hospitals, assisted living facilities, and other clinics.
Healthcare Manager
Perhaps you’re more interested in a leadership role, though. If so, you could work your way up to being a healthcare manager. Personnel in these jobs typically need leadership and management skills combined with hands-on, proactive knowledge and experience and often have at least some past time working directly with patients or in research or other positions.
Healthcare managers must be able to effectively work with medical staff, government liaisons, equipment suppliers, finance and HR workers, custodial staff, and others. You can get healthcare management roles in facilities such as hospitals, nursing homes, medical clinics, research centers, and rehabilitation clinics. Depending on the job, you may have to handle staffing and budgetary concerns, media requests, strategizing and planning, center operations, and oversee departments or entire organizations.
Crisis Counselor
For some people, a better use of their strengths and skills is in the counseling realm. If you like the idea of helping those struggling with their mental health, especially those who have been the brunt of or witnessed traumatic events, you could specialize in crisis counseling. As a specialist counselor of this type, you’ll help patients who have been through a wide variety of traumatic, intense, and emotionally exhausting (and potentially physically violent) events or periods.
For instance, those you treat may have been raped, held hostage, been involved in a terror attack, held at gunpoint, experienced at-home violence, or dealt with other accidents, attacks, and violent outbursts. Usually, crisis counselors work with people short-term, helping them deal with the fallout of what they’ve gone through not long after it happened.
Most crisis care lasts for one to three months and involves patient assessments and the provision of emotional support, guidance, and treatment. These counselors can work in hospitals, mental health facilities, general health clinics, and other locations.
If you feel like any of the above positions sound interesting to you, spend time researching them and try to speak with those who work in the field to learn more.
