5 Ways To Advance Your Healthcare Career

Collaborative Post

Research by HR for Health has revealed a critical shortage of healthcare workers in the US. This situation, which was already evident pre-COVID-19, has significantly worsened in the years following the events of 2020. This underscores the urgent need for healthcare professionals in various roles, such as nurses, technicians, and support staff, to step up and fill these crucial gaps.

Increased patient demand and a dwindling workforce are two of the main factors facing healthcare services right now. This shortage of healthcare workers not only puts a strain on the existing workforce but also has the potential to impact the quality of patient care. For those working in a sector that is already stretched thin, it's not hard to see why this is becoming a problem.

For those aspiring to build a career within healthcare, the current shortage of workers presents a unique opportunity. There are numerous positions waiting to be filled, offering both newly qualified workers and seasoned professionals a wide range of career paths to choose from. This abundance of opportunities should inspire optimism and a sense of potential for significant career advancement in the healthcare industry.

On this note, this post is going to look at some ways healthcare workers can further their careers, get themselves into their ideal position or sector, and benefit from improved career satisfaction moving forward.

Experience

Experience is a cornerstone of career progression in healthcare. The longer you've been in your current role, the more your skills and knowledge grow. Each day of experience adds to your expertise, enhancing your ability to provide high-quality care to patients and support to colleagues. This should instill a sense of pride in your current role and a feeling of potential for growth.

Career progression in healthcare is not a race. Instead, it's about embarking on a journey of learning and gaining experience to help you move forward or into different areas that can further utilize your knowledge and skill set.

Working in the traveling medical care sector or volunteering for charitable organizations abroad can be a great way to gain relevant experience in a wide range of scenarios or more niche-specific ones. This can expose you to different working conditions and require you to get more creative with how you deal with people and treat them in the face of obstacles you might not face at home, such as lack of access to care or different health conditions specific to regions outside of your home country.

Keep learning, improving, innovating, and building your experience. When the time comes to step forward, you'll have everything you need to succeed. This continuous learning should fill you with excitement and readiness for the future opportunities that await.

Get Certified

Regardless of your current role and qualifications, you need to keep pressing forward with building your expertise and getting certified in as much as possible. The more certification you can gain, the greater your chances of securing that job role.

Getting certified means that you have shown dedication and commitment to excellence and are committed to delivering the highest standards of care possible. This certification proves you are capable and actively working towards being the best you can be.

In addition, the more qualified you are, the more likely you are to increase your earning opportunities.

Great certification options, depending on your career choice, can include the following:

Certified surgical technologists
Certified phlebotomy technician
Certified professional coders
EKG technician certification
Dental assistant certification
Certified patient care technician

Niche Down

Niching down further in your area of expertise can be an excellent way of furthering your career. Within each specialty, there will likely be even more niche areas that you can further train in to make your ideal job a reality and give you the specific abilities to manage certain conditions or workloads. This cannot only make you more valuable in your field but also increase your job satisfaction by allowing you to focus on what you're most passionate about.

Let's take nursing; there are a wealth of different niches that you can specialize in. If you have an interest or preference for end-of-life care, you can move into the palliative care sector; you can niche down further into specific age groups, health conditions, or illnesses such as cancers or Alzheimers, for example, you can focus on providing in-home care only or within in a hospice environment. Or maybe you're a sonographer; you can still niche down by focusing on one body part to help you recognize abnormalities faster and become valued in certain areas rather than simply being a general sonographer.

There are multiple opportunities within each healthcare sector to narrow down your skills further and provide more specialized care in an area that befits your skills and career goals.

Look Into Leadership Roles

Some people are more than happy to stay in their current role or position and move progress forward. This is a completely valid lifestyle and career choice, and there is nothing wrong with not wanting more or changing things up.

However, if you do want to progress, exploring leadership roles can be a great option for you. If you want to climb up the ladder, there are likely going to be many roles within your sector you can pursue for increased career satisfaction and gain the position you want and the value you need from what you do. These roles could include becoming a department head, a clinical manager, or a healthcare administrator.

In the first instance, when looking into leadership roles, it's important to know that leaders recognize leaders. They see qualities they possess in others and can spot those with potential. So, looking into the qualities of a good leader, especially in healthcare, and implementing this is how you work can be a great way to get yourself on the radar. Your employer can see the value you offer, and this can propel you to the front of the line when opportunities become available.

Honing your CV and using relevant Resume Tips for Healthcare Workers can help you ensure that when the chance arises for you to apply for leadership roles, you have the supporting evidence in your resume that will help you get the role and not hinder you.

So whether you're a registered nurse looking to move to charge nurse or you're an EMT looking to move to a paramedic supervisor role, know what you want, develop your leadership skills, and show you have the capacity to do the job before you apply to put you in a stronger position.

Look Into Developing High-demand Skills

What skills are in demand in your sector? Identifying what skills are valuable and limited in resources and then learning and gaining relevant certifications can put you head and shoulders above colleagues and give you an edge in your career. For instance, in nursing, skills like wound care management, patient education, and medication administration are highly sought after. In the technical field, skills like proficiency in using advanced medical equipment or knowledge of the latest medical software can be highly beneficial.

It's about developing yourself and your skills and recognizing what is needed within your sector. For paramedics, investing in learning advanced EMT skills means you are well-placed to offer a greater level of support and care in emergencies. Or you might be an LPN, and you know how to start IVs or give certain medications, making you a valuable resource to your employer and opening the doors for further career advancement.

At this stage, you must offer value to what you already do. While it's a great idea not to continually expand the scope of your capabilities in the context of furthering your career, you want to start by developing demand skills in your area to offer benefits and then build on this to get to where you want to be.

Improving your career prospects is always going to be beneficial for both you and the people you care for. Moving forward, developing your skills and being the best will serve you well and push you to your ideal position.

—End of collaborative post—