If you are weighing your career options, the field of allied health may be just the prescription for you. Allied health is one of the most promising and most necessary career fields today. The huge demand for expanded health care services also makes allied health an industry ripe with long-term advancement opportunities, and virtually unlimited income potential, depending on your chosen specialty.
Identification
Considering a career in allied health? A good place to start would be to gain as much information as you can about what such a career entails, and where your specific interests lie.
By and large, allied health assistants support positions in the medical and dental fields. The assistant is a vital part, even laying the foundation, of the service process. It is essential for a lead physician or dentist to have an allied health assistant involved in the procedures performed on each patient. There are levels of details to be attended to that a licensed medical or dental professional cannot and should not specifically carry out. A good assistant, under the instruction of and in consult with the licensed medical or dental professional, will ensure that these details are accurately and thoroughly executed.
Types
The Association of Schools of Allied Health Professions has identified approximately 100 career types within the cluster of professions known as Allied Health. With such a spectrum of opportunities, begin with a broad view, then narrow your interests to ensure the greatest compatibility with the area that you will study, and ultimately, be employed in.
Listed below are only 21 of the categories of medical and dental practice that provide some type of allied health career.
1. Oriental medicine
2. Anesthesiology
3. Therapy
4. Athletics
5. Audiology
6. Behavioral science and health education
7. Biology
8. Information technology
9. Biomedicine
10. Cardiovascular
11. Chiropractic
12. Clinical
13. Environmental
14. Laboratory technology
15. Cytotechnology
16. Dental hygiene
17. Dental laboratory technology
18. Dietetics
19. Diagnostics
20. Forensics
21. Ophthalmology
Considerations
If you've already decided that you want to become an allied health professional, here are three steps you can take to advance your career:
1. Visit The Association of Schools of Allied Health Professions and explore health careers sites to identify the specific allied health cluster that most interests you.
2. Research as much about your chosen cluster as possible to determine where you would best "fit," in terms of your actual career path.
3. Review the career outlook for your career path to set goals for what you need to accomplish in the next two to three years educationally and professionally.
If you've not yet decided that a career in allied health is for you, here are three steps you can take to crystallize your goals:
1. Identify where your personal and professional passions lie; you may be overlooking the obvious. What you naturally like to do contains clues to what your career goals should be.
2. List the top two to three areas of interest.
3. Research those areas to find the career that is most suitable to you.
Warning
Look BEFORE you leap. One of the biggest mistakes you can make, as many other have, is making a life decision about a career solely on the basis of current or future income potential. Before you enter the work force for the first time or while you are considering making a transition from a present career, take the time you need to research your anticipated career on the basis of your personal interests, not based on money. It is better to get paid for something you love than it is to get paid for something you hate to do.
Potential
Allied health careers are now, and will continue to become, vital to the provision of health care service excellence. If you are service-minded, it is most definitely a career option that is worth a look. The personal, professional and financial rewards could prove more than enough compensation for the time and effort you will have to devote to honing your knowledge and perfecting your skills.
Tags: medical dental, your career, allied health, allied health, allied health, Allied Health Professions
