3 Majors That Can Take Your Into The Healthcare Industry

Most of us dismiss the idea of working in healthcare at about the same time that we find out that it takes a decade or so to become a doctor. What we don’t really realize as teenagers is that the vast majority of healthcare workers aren’t doctors. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves; why do we even care what it takes to get into healthcare work?

We should care because the healthcare field is one of the few sectors of the economy that we know for sure will be growing in the next 10 years, regardless of what else happens in the world. So, for those of us who don’t want to become doctors, here are a few things you can study to get in on the action.

Nursing

Nursing is a fairly popular profession among women, but it’s largely ignored by men because of archaic professional gender norms. There’s absolutely no practical reason to for men to ignore this profession, especially considering the immense demand and excellent compensation for nurses.

It makes the top of this list because it’s the quickest to get into, and because of the huge nursing shortage in the US right now. An LPN (Licensed Practical Nurse) certificate is usually earned in 2 years and the work pays better than most jobs that require 4-year degrees. Nursing also offers excellent upward mobility with more education, with nurses who earn an MSN earning up 88,000 dollars a year.

Business

What can you do in the healthcare industry with a business degree? Well, a lot actually. Hospitals, pharmaceutical companies, and even the physical therapist’s office down the street is a business, and most of them stand to benefit from keeping businesspeople around to manage employees, finances, human resources, and all of the hundreds of other tasks that every medium or large business needs to handle. While, if you’re thinking ahead, a master’s in health administration is ideal for this, a regular MBA tacked on to your existing bachelor’s degree goes a long way. The pay varies massively because someone with a business background could be a standard paper-pusher, an HR person, or the CEO of a hospital.

IT

Ok, seriously, what could you possibly do as a programmer in the healthcare industry, right? Hospitals need to manage a vast amount of information about every patient that comes through their doors, and they need to accurately exchange that information between doctors, nurses, lab techs, and administrators constantly.

Historically we’ve relied on people being incredibly organized with physical paperwork to prevent mistakes, but mistakes to happen, and in a hospital those mistakes can kill people. To deal with that the field of health informatics was born. A healthcare IT person builds and manages data management systems that keep track of patient information for each individual patient.

The healthcare industry is one of the few sectors of the economy that is promising steady growth over the next decade or two. That means job security, steady pay, and the power to name your terms to your employer rather than the other way around.