Reasonable Careers in Healthcare

scatterplatter

I'm getting ready to transition out of the military and into college, most of the "safe" majors don't appeal to me but I do find my interests gravitating toward healthcare related fields. Microbiology, Psychiatry, and Pathology are especially appealing. Most of this shit will require grad school or med school, and I'm not entirely sure I that's a safe bet to make. What can I do as an undergrad to set myself up for success in case plan A doesn't pan out?

ceres

What was plan A again?

zepherin

scatterplatter wrote: »

I'm getting ready to transition out of the military and into college, most of the "safe" majors don't appeal to me but I do find my interests gravitating toward healthcare related fields. Microbiology, Psychiatry, and Pathology are especially appealing. Most of this shit will require grad school or med school, and I'm not entirely sure I that's a safe bet to make. What can I do as an undergrad to set myself up for success in case plan A doesn't pan out?

RN. If at this moment you had veterans preference an RN and 2 years of experience, I could point jobs at you where you would be picked up. Registered Nurses make good money in gov and even more outside of it. Getting those first 2 years of experience is going to be key but most solid nursing programs will help you with that.

Terrendos

Biomedical engineering is a solid undergrad major with a decent chance of getting you a job in the research field even without a grad degree. It's also a solid premed path, but it's not available at every school and it will be more difficult than a lot of degrees. You could try looking into that if the idea of nursing seems scary.

Jean Claude Van Calm

Terrendos wrote: »

Biomedical engineering is a solid undergrad major with a decent chance of getting you a job in the research field even without a grad degree. It's also a solid premed path, but it's not available at every school and it will be more difficult than a lot of degrees. You could try looking into that if the idea of nursing seems scary.

As a biomed (trained by the Army) I support this post. But, BMET doesn't really have a lot to do with caring for patients on a direct level and isn't related to any of your plan A 'ology' fields. Still, I get a keycard, scrubs, and am allowed to flirt with nurses.

Ninja edit to add biomed has been called the equipment physician here at my hospital.

Tofystedeth

If you're good with computers you could get a nursing degree and then go into nursing informatics. I hear that's pretty good money too.

scatterplatter

I should note that aside from Psych most hospital jobs don't appeal to me. Although lab work and software related to healthcare sounds good.

Jean Claude Van Calm

Well, Biomed has a place for you then too. There's development/vendor based repair side with every single manufacturer that can be found in a lab or hospital (roughly 3,155,368,323,554,234,254.7 manufacturers this number based on the amount of crap I have to fix and track in a hospital). There's also general repair depot level stuff, and clinical site services. There's more specialized field technician that do awesome stuff like install entire xray, CT and MRI rooms. Or there's field techs, manufacturing engineers, installation, repair, and clinical services for radiology, ultrasound, patient monitoring, ventilator, anesthesia, microscope, sterilization, surgery, LASER BEAMS, FREAKIN REMOTE CONTROL ROBOTS THAT DO BRAIN SURGERY (sorry got excited) and all types of badass technology.

Hardware is where it's at dawg, software is pretty much witchcraft and those who dare murmur it's siren gibberish should be locked in the mental health ward with the rest of their ilk. *

Join us, we need good people and we have cookies. ** And you already know a duder that works for BIG NAME COMPANY srsly.

*this is not true and I apologize

**Also not true in general but come to my shop and arrangements can be made.

I should move to recruiting for my company.

cecily

No one has mention becoming an EMT for a while. I say for a while because it's easy to burn out on that job. I think it doesn't take very long to become an EMT and you would have a pretty decent income while you explore your options. The nurses will be flirting with YOU--lol--and you'll spend lots of time OUT of the hospitals.

Some states have RN programs that require only two years while other states require four years, so check that out. Some states also offer PN's or Practical Nurses's licences that require only two years and if you like it you can continue on to get your RN while you work as a PN.

Xandar

Healthcare information technology is a decent option. You can work for a hospital or a vendor(GE, Epic, NextGen, numerous others), travel or not travel. You impact patient outcome, but at an abstract level and (usually) don't have to actually be AT the hospital which is good cause there are sick people there. :-) Things are really busy in this sector right now due to Meaningful use and all that entails. If you are more interested in PC's/software then medical equipment or providing care this is a good choice.

Jean Claude Van Calm

Xandar wrote: »

Healthcare information technology is a decent option. You can work for a hospital or a vendor(GE, Epic, NextGen, numerous others), travel or not travel. You impact patient outcome, but at an abstract level and (usually) don't have to actually be AT the hospital which is good cause there are sick people there. :-) Things are really busy in this sector right now due to Meaningful use and all that entails. If you are more interested in PC's/software then medical equipment or providing care this is a good choice.

BURN THE WITCH!

ins0mniac

cecily wrote: »

No one has mention becoming an EMT for a while. I say for a while because it's easy to burn out on that job. I think it doesn't take very long to become an EMT and you would have a pretty decent income while you explore your options. The nurses will be flirting with YOU--lol--and you'll spend lots of time OUT of the hospitals.

Some states have RN programs that require only two years while other states require four years, so check that out. Some states also offer PN's or Practical Nurses's licences that require only two years and if you like it you can continue on to get your RN while you work as a PN.

EMT's (at least in Massachusetts) require a college level course that can be taken over the course of a semester, or shorter. Also you have to pass the state's exam in order to actually get your license. Be forewarned, you won't exactly be making RN money. $11.50/hr base pay here. I have a friend who's been doing it for about 5 years and he's at about $13/hr.



This is why I still wait tables.

Mad Jazz

ins0mniac wrote: »

cecily wrote: »

No one has mention becoming an EMT for a while. I say for a while because it's easy to burn out on that job. I think it doesn't take very long to become an EMT and you would have a pretty decent income while you explore your options. The nurses will be flirting with YOU--lol--and you'll spend lots of time OUT of the hospitals.

Some states have RN programs that require only two years while other states require four years, so check that out. Some states also offer PN's or Practical Nurses's licences that require only two years and if you like it you can continue on to get your RN while you work as a PN.

EMT's (at least in Massachusetts) require a college level course that can be taken over the course of a semester, or shorter. Also you have to pass the state's exam in order to actually get your license. Be forewarned, you won't exactly be making RN money. $11.50/hr base pay here. I have a friend who's been doing it for about 5 years and he's at about $13/hr.



This is why I still wait tables.

There are multiple levels of certification. EMT Basic is about a semester, yeah. To go all the way to Paramedic, you're looking at 9 months minimum after you get your basic, and I'm convinced that 9 month programs make shitty medics. More legit programs are ~2 years, more or less the same timeframe as it would be to get your RN. Pay depends on who runs the system, but tends to start at 40-50k per year and scales relatively well. Also, you'll have as much overtime as you want, so the high end can be pretty high if you put in the hours.