The healthcare industry is fascinating, but not just everyone is cut out for the rigorous coursework involved in becoming a physician, nor the long hours of being on call, even after earning their medical degree. But for those who have a passion for helping others or who are interested in an exciting career in healthcare, there are many alternatives to becoming a doctor. Below are just a few.
Promote Your Colleagues
The healthcare industry is insanely competitive; hospitals and other patient care facilities must convince patients that their services are preferred over other institutions. This may include publicizing the education of medical staff, cutting-edge technology or certain therapies that might not be available at other healthcare facilities nearby.
Hospitals maintain expansive marketing budgets for media-savvy professionals to tell stories, produce videos, launch campaigns, measure the organization’s performance and a host of other tools to convince patient to seek their medical care within that institution. The higher education, the better opportunities you have and you can now get your masters in healthcare online, so you can easily go to school while you work.
Go Fast
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, job growth for Emergency Medical Technicians (EMTs) is on the rise and it’s not slowing down anytime soon. EMTs know a little about everything because they must provide immediate treatment to patients they encounter. Most EMTs work for hospitals or fire departments, and they provide initial care in ambulances or helicopters or emergency rooms. EMTs are usually the first medical experts dispatched when a person or persons require immediate medical attention.
Practice Medicine
Interestingly enough, you don’t have to become a doctor to ultimately practice medicine. If you are not willing to go through all the hard long years of medical school along with residency and any other specialty you might need to put in time for, you might want to consider nursing school. Nursing is also a well-paying medical career and it allows you to make a difference without actually becoming a doctor. With that said, nursing also has its challenges, but it also has its rewards too.
If you are looking to take your nursing career to the next level, you can also become a nurse practitioner. You can still see patients as doctors do and you can still make a huge difference for your patients. You still have to put in the time at school, but it is far less intensive as becoming as doctor would be.
Healthcare Techs
The healthcare industry is a large industry. It needs more than just simply doctors, nurses, and even EMTs to make a difference. It needs technicians as well. This could be anything from working in radiology, sonography, x-ray, etc. These are all well-paying medically careers for those who are looking to make a difference in healthcare without becoming a doctor. Without these kinds of jobs, it would be far more difficult for doctors to diagnose their patients and furthermore, make it more difficult to treat whatever is ailing them. Without people being able to run all of this medical tech, we wouldn’t necessarily have all of the advancements in modern medicine and treatment plans for major diseases that we would have today.
Pharmaceuticals
One of the reasons people want to get involved in healthcare is to be a part of the medicine that helps people. Becoming a pharmacist can help you do just that and allow you to still make a difference in the healthcare world. Whether it be to running a pharmacy and making sure everyone gets the right medication and that they understand how it can help them along with the side effects, or conducing pharmaceutical research on developing new and improved medicine for people, it all contributes to making a difference in modern medicine and the patients livelihood.
Be Proactive With Prevention
Dieticians help people of all ages implement healthier habits that help achieve health goals. Obesity, even at a young age, is a major factor in chronic illnesses. By choosing to become a dietician, you may work with school districts to implement nutrition campaigns to educate students. You also make work in concert with nursing homes to ensure the food safety and proper nutrition for elderly patients. Dieticians also work in hospitals to oversee patient menus, recommend menu rotations and make certain that there are healthy dining options in hospital cafeterias. The overall goal of a dietician is to help people make wiser choices about their diet and nutrition.
Of course, these are just examples of health-related careers that are available. Pharmacy techs, registered nurses, physician assistants and many other medical jobs may also be of interest to individuals who want to make an impact in this very noble industry, but who aren’t interested in becoming a physician.