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Healthcare Stepping-Stone Jobs
Megan Malugani / Monster Contributing Writer
You don’t need a four-year college degree to qualify for some of the fastest-growing jobs in healthcare. Many occupations on healthcare employers’ most-wanted lists require two or fewer years of education and can serve as springboards to higher positions.
“There are a number of allied health professions that have career ladders attached to them,” says Debra Stock, the American Hospital Association’s vice president of member relations. Radiologic technicians, clinical lab technicians, physical therapy assistants, pharmacy technicians and nursing assistants are all in high demand and can lead to elevated positions if a worker attains additional education or certification.
For example, radiologic technicians, who help prepare patients for X-rays and other diagnostic tests, can advance to become radiologic technologists and then further specialize in mammography or magnetic resonance imaging, Stock says. Clinical lab technicians, who perform laboratory procedures, can follow a similar progression, moving first to a technologist role and then specializing in an area such as pathology. Each step up the healthcare ladder would generate more responsibility and fatter paychecks, Stock says.
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Likewise, workers interested in physical therapy (PT) or pharmacy can start in secondary roles before deciding whether to invest in PT or pharmacy school.
Registered pharmacist Cynthia Reilly says her experience as a pharmacy technician served as a stepping-stone to her current career. Reilly started college as a journalism major but had to take time off from school for financial reasons. During that period, she worked full-time as a hospital pharmacy technician. “I had not been interested in being a pharmacist before, but when I spent so much time in the pharmacy, I realized the range of opportunities available,” says Reilly, who also credits mentors with encouraging her to pursue a pharmacy career.
PhillyXTech
about 1 month ago
240 comments
I'm right there with you. Although to be honest, I don't regret the experience that I had at college, it gave me a different perspective from many of my classmates when I entered RT school. Many of them were almost a decade younger than I was, so the manner in which I approached the subject matter allowed for me to learn more than simply how to position a patient.
While that is certainly importaint and integral to the job, the habits of constantly asking questions that I have always had and honed in college, though annoying to some of my more "where's the nearest bar," classmates, allowed me to be more observant in my current work of pathologies that would require different types of interventions than may be innitially shown on an order.
If you see a displaced rib fracture, you wait for the reading to determine if the patient has a punctured lung before you send them merrily on their way.
So while I sometimes bemone my advancing age, (I'm not that old, but still....), and think that perhaps I would have been best skipping the inbetween, I think that it's the inbetweens that really end up defining who we are now, and what type of healthcare providers we are going to be.
As for getting a job, have faith. They can't all be down days.
roxiefoxx
about 1 month ago
14 comments
sometimes i wish I knew these options before I spent four years of my life to university and I STILL can't get a job...