Healthcare is a field that provides a lot of fulfilment in your job. It’s a career choice that gives you the chance to make a difference and save people’s lives. It can be something that motivates you to get out of bed and give each workday 110%. However, it’s also a job that involves working directly with patients, and that’s something that a lot of people can’t stomach. There is only a small percentage of people that could have someone’s life in their hands and still have the focus and clarity to operate on them. Knowing that a mistake could cost someone’s life is enough for some people to completely avoid the healthcare field.
However, there are many positions in healthcare that don’t involve directly working with patients. No matter what reasons you have for wanting to avoid contact with patients, there are actually lots of useful roles that you can still take up in order to provide an essential service to the community. You’ll still get the satisfaction knowing that you’re part of a system that helps to save lives, but you won’t experience anxiety knowing that one mistake with your hands could cost the life of a patient.
Healthcare Actuary
Health organisations aren’t just about doctors and nurses. There are also management positions such as a healthcare actuary that needs to allocate resources in order to provide quality patient care to everyone that walks through their doors. Whether it’s taking into account financial expenses of a hospital or analysing data to adjust the prices of your services, there are lots of tasks involved as an actuary that can have a huge impact on the quality of care that patients receive. So if you want a job that is behind the scenes yet still extremely important in providing good healthcare services, becoming an actuary is actually a solid choice if you have the organisational and management skills required.
Take a look at this article on how to become an actuary to learn a bit more about the task and what it involves. It’s a position that still demands a lot of attention and responsibility, but you won’t be working directly with patients. Instead, your focus will be on all patients and being able to create policies and make changes to systems that will benefit them in the long run.
Healthcare IT Specialist
In order for a hospital to manage its duties efficiently, they need to use a range of different computers and pieces of technology. This is where healthcare IT specialists come into play. Whether you’re a network specialist, a programmer or even someone that specialises in the maintenance of healthcare-specific machines, there are actually a lot of IT-focused roles in healthcare. This is going to become an increasingly popular role for people that want to work in healthcare with IT-related degrees.
There are lots of different technologies that help the healthcare industry operate efficiently. With newer technologies being introduced on a regular basis, you’ll have the opportunity to be at the forefront of development, giving patients access to some advanced treatment options and helping doctors manage all of their patients and information with ease. This is a satisfying and supportive role that is always going to be needed.
In some cases, you might not even need to have healthcare knowledge to work in this type of field. This is because some IT specialists work in hospitals with a focus on carrying out general IT-related tasks. For example, a hospital is going to need an office network that involves routers, WiFi devices and network switches. This has nothing to do with healthcare but you’re still providing a service to a healthcare organisation. This means you’re indirectly helping doctors with their own duties by providing IT support.
Administrative Assistant
Administrative tasks are important in healthcare because it helps keep the doctors and nurses organised. Whether it’s sorting out papers, helping to answer calls, working at a receptionist desk or even scheduling appointments, there are countless tasks that can help doctors and nurses work more efficiently. Handling these day-to-day medical tasks for those healthcare professionals frees up a lot of their time and helps them stay organised, meaning they can focus solely on treating patients instead of administrative tasks.
This is a job that doesn’t require much experience. If there are healthcare-related things you should learn for this role, they’ll generally be taught on-site. However, in most cases, you’re not going to need much medical knowledge in order to get yourself a job as an administrative assistant at a clinic or the healthcare industry as a whole.
Medical Transcriptionist
If you’re interested in helping the healthcare industry but want to work remotely, then medical transcription services are actually a fantastic way to contribute and earn a decent salary. Medical transcriptionists typically listen to audio recordings that are taken by doctors or even researchers. This is then transcribed into written documents that are submitted back to the doctor or whatever service you work for. The goal here is to accurately transcribe what the doctor has said. This could even be conversations that surgeons have inside the operating theater that are recorded, transcribed and then used later for various purposes.
Becoming a transcriptionist is difficult because you need to have a great ear and excellent typing skills. Transcribing words quickly takes a considerable amount of work and is something that you gradually improve at as you do it more often. Luckily, a lot of medical transcriptionist services can be carried out remotely and the results aren’t needed urgently in most cases. This means you can take your time with most medical transcription services though you’ll usually have a deadline of a couple of days depending on how urgent it is.
Medical Equipment Engineer
If you’re looking for a way to put your engineering and electrical skills to use in the healthcare field then why not consider specialising in the repair and maintenance of medical equipment? This is an incredibly specialised career choice but it’s also one that offers a lot of satisfaction in your job. Hospitals and clinics need a lot of help when it comes to maintaining their equipment. After all, if something doesn’t work then it could contribute to a patient’s declining health. This is where medical equipment technicians come in to help repair, maintain and even upgrade certain types of medical equipment.
This is a role that requires a lot of training but it’s also one that pays extremely well. You can also make use of your engineering skills to take on side jobs that are outside of the medical industry if you ever need a bit of extra money. Since this is a highly specialised role, you can expect to work with many different healthcare organisations across the country. You might even be asked to work in different healthcare settings and not necessarily in areas where patients are treated. This is a role that is closely related to healthcare IT specialists, but it focuses more on the hardware and equipment side than just general IT.
There are dozens of fantastic roles that you can take up if you want to work in a healthcare field but don’t necessarily want to work with patients or even other people. It’s a fantastic feeling knowing that you’re contributing to the betterment of the healthcare system and everyone has their role to play, making these career choices that you can certainly find fulfilment and purpose in.
Do you have a non patient facing role in the NHS? Let us know what it is and why you chose it.
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