Feb
There are countless professions in the field of medicine, and of course some are very well-known: doctors, surgeons, nurses and anesthesiologists. But if you’re interested in finding a career in medicine that’s a little more obscure, below are some examples you just might want to consider.
Medicine relies not only on those who take care of patients, but also on those people who work in laboratories doing research, investigating newly-discovered microbes and finding new forms of medicines to treat these threats. If you work as a lab technician you might be trying out new forms of antibiotics on bacteria that are resistant to old antibiotics, or you might be scrutinizing the genome to discover ways to slow the human aging process and make the body stronger and better able to fight off threats. There are even sleep researchers whose job it is to examine people’s brain patterns while they sleep; some of them can even spend all day counting the number of times people yawn!
An anesthesiologist is a person who administers anesthesia to people about to undergo surgical procedures. Anesthesiologists are also responsible for making sure that your vital signs remain healthy the whole time you’re knocked out. And it’s the anesthesiologist who leads the countdown with you (“10, 9, 8…”); those numbers are usually the last things a person hears before he or she goes under.
A medical equipment preparer is the professional who gets all of the instruments and other materials ready for a surgery. He or she will find all of this equipment, sterilize everything that needs to be sterilized, and lay it all out properly so that everything is ready to go. (You didn’t think that surgeons did these things themselves, did you?)
A medical transcriptionist is kind of like the court reporter of the hospital. He or she will write down all of a doctor’s notes and other dictations, and use them to create a patient’s medical record. Much of this work can be done at home online-in fact, there’s a big push currently to try to get all medical records posted online, to replace cumbersome old techniques of filing away patient records.
Home health aides are people who work under the supervision of a nurse, doctor, or other rehabilitation specialist. They travel to patients’ homes to make sure that the patient is performing his or her proper exercises, and they monitor progress, medication intake, as well as any problems or pain that a patient might be experiencing. This can be very rewarding work as you get to help patients one-on-one, and really help them along on the road to recovery. It’s also fun because you’re not cooped up in the same office all day long.
As technology develops, look for new medical careers to be created. The fields of tele-rehabilitation (rehab over the Internet), art and music therapy and DNA treatment are all burgeoning fields that promise to yield exciting new professions.