Not Everybody Is Cut Out For A Career In Health. Are You?

Becoming a successful healthcare practitioner is all about mindset. Do you have the right personality for the job? If you don’t, you could be setting yourself up for a big fall. After all, having a happy and healthy career in medicine is about service and wanting to do the best for people.

Recently, Forbes did a study of the highest-paying and most satisfying jobs in the US. What they found was quite remarkable. More than 90 percent of top health professionals said that they were happy with their jobs. For instance, 91 percent of ophthalmic surgeons stated that they were satisfied with what they did and they earned more than $350,000 a year on average. In fact, the top five best-paying, most highly rated jobs were all in the medical sector.

The cool thing about the sector is that you have an opportunity to fully serve your patients and make a meaningful difference in their lives. As a health professional, you’ll always be held in high esteem by your patients as well as their families, and your impact on their lives will be felt for years to come.

Unfortunately, some people who go into medicine aren’t happy there. Many people find the procedures and the regulations frustrating. Sometimes it can feel like an environment where innovation is stifled.
Before jumping in and searching vacancies for advanced nursing practitioners, consider getting your online masters in nursing education.

Here are some qualities you’ll need as a nurse practitioner.

Respect

As a health professional, you’ll be privy to people’s most intimate moments. Your life is often literally in their hands. And even if their condition isn’t life threatening, it’s never nice to know that your body is failing you.

Respect is at the core of what medical professionals do. They have to be mindful of their patient’s feelings at all time and have to make sure that patient confidentiality is upheld. That means that they need to understand that not talking about their patients is a core tenet of their job and something that they must do out of respect.

Medical professionals also need to be constantly mindful of the wishes of their patients. Every patient is different, and part of showing respect is accommodating those differences. Some patients, for instance, from different cultures and traditions might have different rules and requirements.

You’ll Have To Think Quickly

Often in the world of healthcare, time is of the essence. Sometimes you’ve got literally seconds to tend to a patient, diagnose the problem and stabilise their condition. These situations occur both inside medical facilities, and out.

When it comes to responding quickly, paramedics are on the front line. They have to get to the scene as quickly as possible and start administering treatment as soon as it’s required. As a medic, you’ll often find yourself in situations where you’ve got to be quick on your feet. Health work often requires responding quickly to incidents, especially in this age of terrorism.

You’ll Have To Have Good Problem-Solving Skills

When it comes to being a healthcare professional, we don’t often consider the importance of problem-solving skills. But it turns out, this is what many medical professionals spend their time doing. Working out what is wrong with a patient can often be complicated. Patients who are taking medications can suffer side effects, but it’s often not clear what is causing the side effects and whether it is the drugs or the disease. Doctors need to know how to solve these problems by perhaps prescribing a different combination of drugs that don’t cause the same adverse response.

People who deal with medical data have to be problem-solvers too. They need to be able to take CT scan, interpret what they see and accurately diagnose the problem. They then need to pass the results to the surgeon who must then consider which treatment option will be best.

You’ll Need Physical Stamina

Health professionals rarely sit in offices all day long. Instead, they’re up on their feet, trotting as fast as they can to see their next patient. Life on hospitals wards can be particularly manic. The good thing about all this activity is that it is good for your health and means that time flies while you’re on the job, But if you’re not physically fit, you won’t be able to keep up. Expect to do lots of heavy lifting on the job, including people in some cases.

You’ll Need Amazing Interpersonal Skills

When people get sick, they’re often tired and scared. As a health professional, it’s your job to assuage their concerns and help them focus on getting better. To do this, you’ll need incredible people skills. Not only will you have to be a positive and bubbly person, but you’ll also have to instinctively know the right thing to say in difficult situations. It’s your job, as a health professional, to be a rock for your patients.

Health professionals don’t work in isolation. Instead, they work as part of a larger team where each person has a particular role. Good personal communication skills aren’t just nice to have, they’re essential. Medical professionals need to be able to accurately communicate with each other when discussing their patients to avoid making mistakes.

You’ll Need An Eye For Detail

Medical records, patient reports and physical symptoms are all parts of everyday life in the health sector. In those details are the secrets for how to make a patient better and return them to health. Medical mistakes can have far-reaching consequences, not only for the patient but also for your own finances and career prospects.

There are all sorts of horror stories out there about patients who have been prescribed the wrong medicine, given the wrong drip and sewn back up by surgeons with medical instruments still inside their bodies.

You’ll Have To Be Flexible

Life as a healthcare practitioner isn’t easy. You’ll have to be flexible when it comes to working hours and responsibility. People don’t just get sick between 9 am and 5 pm, Monday to Friday. They get sick all hours of the day and night, and at the weekend.

Medical professionals should expect to have to work long hours of overtime, as well as holidays and weekends. As a health professional, you will get a chance to have a break, but it might not be exactly when you wanted to take it.

You Have To Be An Empathetic Person

Going into medicine if you’re not an empathetic person can be a bit of a disaster. If you’re the kind of person who isn’t interested in what other people are feeling, then you might want to choose a different path in life.

If, however, you are the type of person who is desperate to alleviate the suffering of others, then medicine might be just the right career for you. Your job will be to provide comfort and compassion for people battling illness. You’ll get to interact with all sorts of different patients, from children fighting congenital diseases to elderly patients with dementia.

You’ll Need Emotional Stability

Healthcare is both stressful and distressing. It’s stressful because the hours are long and the stakes are high. And it’s distressing because it’s not uncommon to lose a patient, despite your best efforts. People in the medical sector need to be empathetic, but they also need to get used to the fact that some of their patients just aren’t going to make it. This means that they need emotional stability.