Which Healthcare Career is Right for Me? | CHCP

Interested in the healthcare industry, but not sure what healthcare career might best suit you? Use this guide to help find a great fit.

The medical field has a wide array of career options for those interested in helping others, and your career options aren’t limited to doctorate programs or nursing degrees. Allied health careers, which include both clinical and administrative roles, offer an exciting opportunity to pursue your passions at a pace that suits your needs. The healthcare industry has a robust need for more professionals in this field, supporting on the frontlines and from behind the scenes to maintain quality patient care. 

If you’re considering the best path forward for your ideal career in the healthcare field, you can use this guide to help determine your next steps and better understand the breadth of options available.

In This Article:

• The Process of Selecting a Healthcare Profession
• Explore the Different Types of Healthcare Jobs
• More Popular Healthcare Roles to Consider
• Start Your Healthcare Career - Education Programs at CHCP

The Process of Selecting a Healthcare Profession

Choosing a medical career will depend on a variety of factors, including personal preference, desired time commitment, areas of interest, and hopeful outcomes. To start, here are a few key tips and considerations you’ll want to keep in mind.

1.) Understand Your Personal Strengths & Goals

Though choosing the correct path for your medical field career is ultimately your decision, it can be helpful to consider the following things to narrow your options and find a good fit:

• Identify your strengths. Choosing a career path that leverages your existing skills helps soften the learning curve and can make finding your niche within the field of study easier, too.
• Write your top three goals. What do you want to accomplish by pursuing a healthcare career? Are you interested in helping people directly, or would you rather work to better the system of healthcare from the inside out? Do you want to work with patients, or are your goals better suited for working with care providers and hospital administrators? Keep your big three goals nearby as you explore healthcare programs and use them to eliminate potential areas of study that don’t align.
• Consider what you don’t want. Often, deciding what areas of your chosen field you want to stay out of can be just as, if not more, helpful in determining the right path for you. When you have a clear picture of what you don’t want, filtering through programs and schools becomes simpler.
• What do you want out of your education? Beyond the degree or certificate itself, what are you hoping this education will provide? This can be beneficial in narrowing down not only your career options, but in determining what healthcare educational institution is right for you, too. Your chosen school should match your goals and your learning style.
• What lifestyle do you hope to have? If you’re searching for flexibility in your day-to-day schedule, you may want to choose a field that can support a remote healthcare role. You’ll also want to determine the level of variability you prefer in your work. Certain administrative roles may offer a schedule built on routine, for example, while patient-facing professionals working in emergency settings may need to adapt to an unpredictable environment.
• Can you safeguard your choice for the future? Of course, no one can predict the future, but you can choose a school and a career in the healthcare field that offers you opportunities to expand, build upon, or adjust as the needs of the industry change over time.

2.) Keep An Open Mind

Whatever path sparks your interest, don’t forget to remain flexible as you start your education and your understanding of your chosen program deepens. For some students, the first try is the perfect fit, while some students find that a shift in focus is needed to settle into the right path forward. For others still, stackable degree and certificate programs provide the welcome ability to deep dive into an area of passion or combine skills and knowledge from two different areas into a specialized program that opens additional career opportunities.

3.) Talk to Peers & Professionals

Sometimes, the best preparation you can do for your career research is to hear about potential career paths from those who are already doing the work first-hand. Reach out to professionals in the fields you are considering and ask for a coffee date or a few minutes of their time to share the pros and cons of the work they do daily. This can help paint a clearer picture of what possible healthcare careers look like in your mind, and may help eliminate paths that sounded interesting but aren’t quite what you were looking for.

You can hear from former CHCP students in the fields you are considering here.

Explore the Different Types of Healthcare Jobs

There are many different jobs in the medical field that cater to a wide variety of skill sets and applied interests. From different medical job types to different types of certificates and degrees you can pursue, the healthcare field is surprisingly vast. If you’re unsure of where to start on your search for the right path and the educational program aligned with your goals, here are a few core fields to consider.

Direct Patient Care Careers

For some, the main appeal of the healthcare industry is the ability to directly and positively impact the lives of patients on a daily basis. If this is your biggest motivation, careers that allow you direct and regular interaction with patients are likely going to be top of your list. However, there are more areas of study that allow you this regular contact than you might immediately assume. Here are a few programs that you may not have known include regular direct patient care as part of the post-graduate career.

• Radiologic Technology
• Addiction Studies and Mental Health Technician
• Physical Therapy Technician
• Rehabilitation Therapy Technician
• Vocational Nursing
• Cardiac Sonography
• Patient Care Multi-Skilled Technician

Healthcare Administration Careers

Healthcare administration and healthcare management are booming fields with many different positions to choose from and a rising number of openings, as the healthcare industry as a whole continues to grow at an impressive pace. If working within the system of healthcare without the need to be patient-facing daily is of interest to you, consider exploring healthcare administration as your primary career path.

With a healthcare administration degree, you may seek employment as:

• Medical office manager
• Health admissions coordinator
• Healthcare office manager
• Medical administrator
• Medical office administrator
• Executive medical administrative assistant
• Medical record managers

Utilizing principles of management, leadership, psychology, communication, and office coordination, healthcare administrators help keep things running smoothly in hospitals, private practices, diagnostic laboratories, and more.

Diagnostic Medical Careers

For some aspiring healthcare workers, diagnostic medicine is of great interest. These roles often involve a deep understanding of certain topics, specifically pathologies and other criteria that go into making a proper and accurate diagnosis. If diagnostic medicine is your preferred path, consider these CHCP programs to help you work toward your dream career.

• Diagnostic Medical Sonography
• Emergency Medical Technician
• Echocardiography
• Radiologic Science Management

Popular Healthcare Roles to Consider

When you’re determining the best medical field career for your goals, strengths, and future career desires, it can help to have a clearer picture of even the roles that are talked about more often, or more likely to cross your path in your initial research. At CHCP, we pride ourselves on offering a wide variety of programs; to help you prepare for anything from the more “popular” or well-known healthcare roles to careers that you may not have encountered before. Here’s a little more information on some of our better-known programs.

Dental Assisting Careers

If compassionate care in a specialized area is of higher interest to you, training to become a dental assistant can be a rewarding choice. As a dental assistant, you will interact with patients and help elevate their care by ensuring their safety and comfort. From detailed knowledge of oral hygiene to recording dental exams, exposing radiographic images, and helping anxious patients feel more at ease, dental assistants tend to have a wide array of responsibilities within dental offices.

Dental assistant programs should cover a holistic education around the technical and interpersonal skills required to help you be successful as an entry-level dental assistant, no matter where you choose to work after receiving your certification.

Medical Assisting Careers

For those interested in a career that plants them firmly in the middle of patients, care providers, and administrators, medical assisting may be the perfect fit. As a medical assistant, you can expect to perform a mix of clinical, patient-facing, and administrative tasks. You can find medical assistant positions available in a variety of healthcare settings, and may enjoy a wide application of the skills you cultivate through your training.

Medical Coding and Billing Careers

If embracing more academic and behind-the-scenes applications of your medical and healthcare knowledge is an appealing path, medical coding and billing may be an excellent choice. This route is often a good match for those who wish to aid patients by serving as a liaison between insurance companies and patients, helping medical personnel code, file, and appropriately manage claims.

While this can be an often-overlooked aspect of the healthcare field for students when they first begin their search for the right career path, medical coding and billing opens a surprising world of opportunities with a unique ability to help patients better and more confidently obtain the care they need with less fear of not receiving the proper insurance coverage.

Start Your Healthcare Career - Education Programs at CHCP

Long story short, the healthcare field is full of exciting, service-oriented, and impactful career options for students with a wide range of interests and skills. If the medical field is calling your name, The College of Health Care Professions is here to help you understand how to choose a healthcare career. Ready to learn more? Start your application today.