If you’re eager to help people and you are fascinated by the human anatomy, you might be thinking about taking on a career in healthcare. Before we get into this, it’s important to be aware that the healthcare industry isn’t just made up of one or two jobs. There’s far more to healthcare than simply being a nurse or being a doctor. But are you cut out for a position in this industry? That’s a question that is a little difficult to answer because there are a variety of factors to consider here. For instance, you need to think about the issue of responsibility.
Lives In Your Hands
As soon as you enter the healthcare industry, you will on some level be responsible for the welfare of an individual or even a group of people. It’s important not to feel the weight of that responsibility on your shoulders every time you go to work, and it’s true for any area of the healthcare industry.
For instance, you might thinking about becoming a nurse. If that’s the case, the smallest mistake could impact someone’s life. You have to be aware of how to prioritise and categorise patients in the emergency room correctly otherwise someone could suffer because of it. As an example, it is important to be aware that a head trauma is always a priority because of the unseen dangers that can be apparent with this type of condition.
You might think that if you are working in an administrative role, this type of responsibility isn’t there. But it is because your actions and your quality of work will impact whether patients get the support and care that they need. It’s a heavy responsibility for anyone to carry, and it is something that you need to be prepared for in the healthcare industry. Let’s look at some of the other factors you need to consider.
Constantly learning
Just take a look at this tweet from a clearly very stressed out nurse.
Nursing summed up in 1 pic pic.twitter.com/H1oxe9KG10
— Bells (@_bellasimpson) January 22, 2018
Believe it or not, this is an accurate representation of how much reading you’ll have to do for just one year working as a nurse. If you plan on taking the job on full time for the rest of your life, you should expect to be continuously learning through the year to develop fresh skills and to make sure that you are always up to date with the latest procedures as well as other important aspects of the job.
The good news is that these days it’s possible to learn what you need to know online and even gain fresh qualifications in your spare time. With a healthcare administration online BS program, you will be able to make sure that you can learn, study and gain fresh qualifications even when you are already working in a hospital or medical clinic.
Long Hours
Working in the healthcare industry isn’t like a typical job at all. It certainly can’t be compared to the typical office 9 to 5 work because there usually is no 9-5 clock. You could be working any hours that you can think of and many people working in the healthcare industry don’t even get full breaks. Let’ say that you are working as a doctor. If there is a massive catastrophe close to the hospital where you work, you could be called in even if you were on a booked holiday. You might think that you can escape this if you take on an administrative role but don’t count on it. Hospital Administrators have a key role of keeping a hospital functioning as it should all through the day and night. That means that you can find yourself being scheduled to work in the middle of the night.
Of course, in some areas of healthcare, you might find yourself pushing to work for longer hours than you should. That could certainly be true if you were working on research that could one day save thousands of lives. You have to be prepared when working in the healthcare industry, for your job to become a massive part of who you are and your life, more so than any other career. That doesn’t mean that you can’t still have a thriving personal life, but you do need to be prepared for the times when your career will have to come first.
So can you cut it in the healthcare industry? If you have a passion, a true passion for helping people, we suspect the answer is yes. If you are determined to do some good and work to save lives or make them better, no obstacle will stop you from succeeding in whichever position you choose to take as part of the healthcare sector.
