Joan Wagner
Thursday, April 15, 2010
Health Care Worker Guest Author
I have been a health care worker for the last 14 years at a major medical center. In the last few years it has been harder and harder to fill job vacancies. With this in mind changes must be made to attract students into the field. Education in allied health careers at a younger age and training incentives are all good ideas. Getting people excited about the field at an early age is key. If we don't attract young people to these careers it affects our access and quality of health care. This is an important field and being involved in it should be more attractive to students. Being short staffed also affects my coworkers and I at our job. Responsibilities and duties are piled on to a smaller amount of people, making work more taxing and our efficiency lower. Specific reforms to lower school costs and have the government aid in schooling make these majors much more attractive. When I was in school 15 years ago, I had aid for school and aid to help with day care, as I already had 2 kids before I decided to pursue my career in laboratory medicine. Without this, I wouldn't be a part of the health care workforce.
Joan Wagner
Joan Wagner
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It is interesting to hear that job vacancies are becoming more and more hard to fill, because as a student in a health field, I see multiple people fighting for certain jobs. At the same rate, getting into certain fields has become much more competitive, and just as you said it, students are less aware of these opportunities. One of the blog post's on this topic talks about adding and mandating health science courses into secondary schools. Your post just proves how important it is to add these courses to the curriculum. I feel like there are definitely contributing factors to why the vacancies are so hard to fill, but students not being exposed to the opportunities before they have to make a college decision is a huge step that needs to be fixed.
ReplyDeleteI think that she brings up a good point with the government helping more. It is hard in today's economy to afford to go to school. As a student myself, it is difficult to balance work to pay for school and school itself. With less financial stress, I could have more time to focus on school.
ReplyDeleteThanks for contributing to this class blog; I appreciate the important points you offered in your post. Please feel welcome to comment on any other part of this blog.
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