There are many subfields within the medical fields like doctor, physician or MD, the allied health professions, 100+ nursing specialties, holistic medicine, drugs and biotechnology, medical technician jobs, medical devices and products, genetics, care worker, medical administration, etc.
I cover medical jobs, schools and medical boards and organizations in this book.
There is more info in my other medical books. One is a basic framework of medicine in the United States. Another is the medical infrastructure of the world. I created a book for cancer and one for holistic medicine.
Many allied health skills take relatively little time to learn (less than two years). You can generally get a job just about anywhere because health is the biggest industry on the planet right now that is getting bigger all the time. The pay is good for work expended and you can generally work odd shifts if you want like weekends, part-time, night shift, etc.
There are opportunities besides hospitals, medical clinics and nursing homes.
Consider all the medical products and drug companies as well as the government health agencies (usa.gov, healthfinder.gov, cdc.gov, nih.gov, fda.gov) plus the big organizations like the American Medical Association.
The health insurance field is worth multi-billions of dollars a year. They need administrators to process the claims and look for fraud.
A friend of mine went the tedious route to become a board-certified plastic surgeon and told me if he had to do it all over again, he would have become a radiology tech and lived a much easier life because all they do is set patients up on an x-ray machine then take pictures, a clean, easy job, no hassles from the patients and no malpractice threats.
Another friend of mine became an emergency medical technician, got a job in a small rural medical clinic and worked three twelve-hour shifts overnight during the weekend so that was his fulltime job, three nights a week.
I read an article about a physician’s assistant. It took about two years to get the credential. He helps a doctor and walks around the hospital with a stethoscope around his neck with the status of a full doctor.
If you're uncertain about what to do with your life, get a healthcare skill by taking an allied health profession program at a vocational school or community college for a year or two then get a job and contemplate other things you're interested in while living a comfortable lifestyle unlike many of the starving artists, bums and hippies who don't have a solid profession to fall back on.
This is the way to go without becoming a doctor. Some people like to be doctors because of the high status anywhere, especially in a hospital but I met a country doctor once who gave me a few stitches while telling me it’s a thankless job because everybody wants something from you. You deal with people at their hardest times when they’re sick or injured.
Nobody talks about the emotional cost of dealing with people. Some people like me are too empathetic or too sensitive. I feel people’s pain which makes me feel bad. If I had to deal with people’s pain all day long, I would probably use drugs at night to take the edge off.
If you’re lonely nerd who wants to feel needed, by all means be a doctor but if you want to enjoy your life, it’s a job for workaholics.
The reason is that the need never ends. A successful ophthalmologist near me has a good practice but the problem is that he keeps getting more patients, so many that all he keeps working. He feels like he cannot just abandon them and quit because there are so few eye doctors that the need is great.
Most doctors work 50+ hours a week.
As a medical tech, you do one simple task and that's it.
In a hospital, you can be a nurse dealing with the patients or down the basement in the CAT scan lab, running less than people a day since every CAT scan takes at least 40 minutes.
Nobody can predict the future but it’s pretty easy to see the future in the medical industry. There will be more care workers needed for old people and end of life treatments.
Technology will bring forth new machines that will need operators called medical technicians.
Robotic surgery is here.
Nanotechnology, genetic improvement, transhumanism (improving people) and bionics (artificial parts) are all here.
A list of medical careers at differentmedicalcareers.com/list-of-medical-careers is:
Paramedic Activity therapist Admitting Clerk Alternative Health Care Alternative Medicine Anatomy and Physiology Anesthesiologist Anesthesiologist assistant Applied Researcher Art Therapist Athletic Trainer Audiologist Biochemist Bioengineer Bioinformatics Associate Bioinformatics Scientist Bioinformatics Specialist Biomedical Chemistry Biomedical Science …
