Healthcare Sector -5 Most in-demand careers

Healthcare just became the largest employment sector in America. As of 2017, it surpassed manufacturing and retail, largely due to the collective aging of the nation and a growing demand for senior care.

Within the next decade, over a quarter of Americans will be over the age of 55.
careers in the healthcare sector
Many blue collar and knowledge work careers are staring down the face of automation and falling prey to outsourcing via cost-cutting measures.

Meanwhile, healthcare-related jobs retain strong, even growing prospects.

Nearly all healthcare jobs require local support and can’t easily be transferred offshore to regions with more favorable currency exchange, and growth includes significant support, administrative, technical, and management posts, not just more primary caregivers like Ophthalmologist , nurses and doctors, or pharmaceutical roles.

Students looking for a good return on their educational investment would do well to look into healthcare.

Here are five of the most in-demand healthcare-related careers:

Health Services Manager

A health services management career is an excellent choice for someone who has strong leadership, motivational, and organizational skills. It requires a broad knowledge of healthcare services in order to advise patients, and good business skills.

Health Services Managers might need an Associate degree or above and might combine traditional business education with health sciences courses to position themselves for success. This is a role that requires more education but is also more valuable and flexible in the long term.

Healthcare IT Support

An emerging field, IT specialists who serve healthcare organizations including hospitals, clinics, suppliers, and healthcare-adjacent on-demand services, are poised for impressive growth. While healthcare is strongly resistant to automation as a whole, it has also been slow to take advantage of the efficiency and opportunities afforded by technology.

Roles might include medical systems analysts to help organizations understand and take advantage of opportunities for more effective systems, programmers to develop specialist systems, and medical coders to support the ongoing administration of new systems.

These roles would require staff to study computer science, engineering, and other technology programs and may or may not require any actual healthcare studies.

Personal Care Aide

Personal care aides are in increasing demand, mainly to support the care of seniors. They perform non-technical services such as bathing and assistance in a seniors’ care facility. A personal care aide can find work almost anywhere and requires relatively little education. Pay rates are modest, but there can be the opportunity for supervisory or management roles as you gain experience.

Home Health Aide

Home health aides offer non-technical support in remote locations. They travel to clients’ homes to help them with challenges like bathing, dressing, or taking medication, and often serve seniors or those with injuries, disabilities, or chronic health concerns.

This role requires relatively little education, and is paid at a modest level but offers more flexibility and freedom than many healthcare roles. It’s possible to be a freelancer, contractor, or employee, and to set hours that work for you.

Registered Nurse

While there’s a huge rise in healthcare support roles like administration, management, and technical support, there’s also a continual demand for registered nurses. Hospitals employ RNs to provide primary patient care and to support doctors.

They may also operate out of clinics. It takes a specialist degree to become an RN that involves classroom studies and practical work experience, and pay rates are good, with the opportunity to move up the ranks to management positions.

Since it can be hard to know which type of healthcare career would best suit you, it’s a good idea to look for a college that offers a range of courses and can give you exposure to different areas. If you think you’d like to become a medical administrative assistant, you could start with a program geared toward preparing you for becoming an assistant, and then pivot to a more specialized, longer, or a more basic program depending on your interests and strengths.

With the amount of change in the job world, it can be bewildering to know where to start. The last thing you want to do is invest time and money into educating yourself for a specialized career that vanishes by the time you get out of school or before you’ve paid your student loans off. Invest wisely by finding a career that suits you in the healthcare sector.

If primary care isn’t of interest, there are still many different types of jobs that offer strong career prospects where you can put your skills to use.

Unlike most other sectors, healthcare jobs are resistant to outsourcing and automation, meaning you’ll have excellent job security and a steady future.

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