Health Careers

Are you the sort of person who cares about other people? Does it give you a warm glow to know that you've made someone's life better, eased their pain, or given them comfort in a time of need? Then, health careers are quite possibly where you belong. That doesn't mean that you have to be a doctor (though that's certainly the most prominent of health careers), but it does mean that you'll need to know how to work with medicine and medical equipment. You'll also need to be good at working with people. In a health career, you'll frequently meet people who are frightened and sick, and one of the most important parts of your job will be putting them at ease and letting them know that things are going to be better than they are at the moment.

What are some health degrees? Let's look at a few:

Doctor: There are many different types of doctors, from general practitioners to surgeons to cardiologists. Becoming any of these requires many years of school and long internships, but if you think you have the brains, skills, and stamina for this rigorous education and apprenticeship, doctor is the most important (and highly paid) of all health careers that you can be in. Bear in mind, of course, that the education itself is expensive, and you should look into loans, grants, and scholarships to help you pay for it, but the results will probably be worth it.

Nurse: Although doctors are generally considered to be at the top of the healthcare profession, those health careers involving nursing actually allow you to spend more time with patients. Doctors are too busy to spend much time with the people they are treating, so a patient in a hospital (or even a doctor's office) is more likely to spend time with a nurse than with a doctor. If you like working with people and treating their medical problems, this can be a more satisfying career than doctor, even if it doesn't pay quite as well.

Lab technician: Lab technicians do the technical work involved in analyzing a patient's blood, tissue, and electronic imagery (X-rays, CT scans, MRIs, etc.). Health careers in the laboratory include phlebotomist (the person who draws a patient's blood), X-ray technician, chemist, toxicologist (who analyzes foreign chemicals in a patient's body), and many others. There are so many health careers that it may take you years to choose just which one is the right one for you.

Healthcare Careers
If you had to name the most important group of careers on Earth, what would they be? Military careers? Law enforcement careers? Careers in government? While all of these careers are undoubtedly of high importance, most people would probably pass right over them and name healthcare careers as the most significant jobs that anyone can be involved with. What could be more important than making people healthy, easing their pain, or saving their lives? It's hard to imagine anything more important or personally rewarding than that.

If you care about people, if you want to make their lives better, there's a good chance that you have your eye on healthcare careers as the place to look for the profession you'll spend your life in. You won't necessarily become rich from working in healthcare (though some doctors have managed to accrue significant wealth), but you'll have the lifelong satisfaction of knowing that you've made the world a better place for people to live in. And, you'll probably make close and lasting friends in the process.

Doctors are the best-known healthcare profession, and there are many types of healthcare careers a doctor can be part of. You could work with cancer patients as an oncologist, with people who have digestive problems as a gastroenterologist, with patients who have heart problems as a cardiologist, with patients who have foot problems as a podiatrist, with patients who have emotional difficulties as a psychiatrist, with patients who have brain and nervous system problems as a neurologist, or with patients who have eye problems as an ophthalmologist.

As a nurse, one of the most popular of healthcare careers, you'll be able to work even more closely with patients. You could specialize as a pediatric nurse and work with children or as a psychiatric nurse and work with people with emotional difficulties. You could be an emergency nurse and work in the ER or as a military nurse and work with armed services personnel.

You could be a laboratory technician and analyze blood and tissue from patients. Or, you could be a phlebotomist and draw the blood that the lab techs analyze. You could be an X-ray technologist and work with X-ray equipment, or you could work with CT scanners and MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) machines. The number of healthcare careers is huge, and you can choose the one where you feel your talents and interests lie.