8 Great Reasons to Work in Healthcare

While it’s common to associate healthcare work with hospitals and doctor’s offices, many interesting and potentially lucrative opportunities exist in other settings as well. Some practitioners visit the homes of local patients and clients, for example, whereas others—such as travelling nurses and doctors—may journey to remote locations to provide care that would otherwise be lacking. As a healthcare professional, you could choose to work at the same desk every day and rarely interact with others or you could travel extensively, meeting with different people from all walks of life.

Depending on your geographic location, academic accreditations, and work experience, a career in healthcare has the potential to provide an annual income that’s significantly higher than the national average. For example, the average annual salary for a anesthesiologist’s assistant ranges from $120,000 to $200,000. In some cases, medical doctors earn several hundred thousand dollars each year.

One benefit of working in a health-related career is the opportunity to focus on a highly focused area that holds special interest for you. As a result, many are drawn to healthcare by a desire to become an expert in a specific field, such as cardiology, oncology, pulmonology, radiology, and surgery. (You can learn the details about your unique interests in our Career Explorer.)

Would you prefer to work on a part-time or full-time basis? Would you rather be employed in an on-site role or find a position that allows you to work remotely? Would you be happier as an employee or working for yourself? Regardless of how you answer those questions, there’s a good chance you’ll be able to find a healthcare career that supports your personal aspirations.

Have you ever walked into an appointment at a hospital or doctor’s office and discovered that all the equipment there was 10 or 20 years old? Probably not, because constant innovation in healthcare technology means that new tools and processes for diagnosing and treating medical conditions are always pushing the profession into exciting new frontiers. So, if you’re passionate about the idea of mastering emerging technologies to help remedy age-old ailments and ease human suffering, you may want to consider career options such as becoming an environmental health scientist, dental informatics specialist, or forensic biologist.

Graduating from a medical school or other type of healthcare education program in a particular country doesn’t necessarily mean that you’ll be restricted to working there once your diploma is in hand. The demand for skilled professionals in other parts of the world creates opportunities to practice your trade working overseas as well. Foreign governments, universities, and nongovernmental organizations are often eager to pay competitive salaries to those who have completed their healthcare training in countries such as the United States, Canada, and England.

At every level and in every setting, successful healthcare initiatives require collaboration among many different stakeholders willing to work together toward a common objective. Doctors in emergency rooms, technicians in laboratories, care providers in hospices, and managers in boardrooms must all work effectively as team members in order to achieve the desired results. That’s just one of the reasons why developing “soft skills,” such as communication and empathy, is so important—and rewarding.

Although health-related jobs can be demanding, stressful, and challenging at times, one of the greatest rewards healthcare workers experience is the immense personal satisfaction of a job well done. After all, there aren’t many other industries that allow you to develop expertise in an area that interests you personally and then use that knowledge to improve the lives of others on a regular basis.