Never mind healthcare, work in general is something that has massively changed in recent years. Everything from work patterns to recruitment processes have been completely revolutionized by myriad different technological developments which have defined recent times. Just think of the remote working trend. Truly, with the home office, video conferencing, increased ability to do work on the go, and changing recruitment methods, work itself has been reinvented.
Healthcare jobs are, of course, no different. We need only think about the changes in the recruitment process, which now involves massive online health boards where recruits can find employment in the healthcare sector across the country. Health Job Nationwide, one such recruitment service, notes that the number of people finding jobs in this way is at an all-time high.
Furthermore, even if you have been working in a healthcare role for years, you need to adapt to new realities. Care itself does not mean the same thing it did twenty years ago and regardless of where you find yourself in the healthcare world – from a new graduate fresh out of med school browsing the health job boards to a seasoned physician – it is almost totally axiomatic now that failing to adapt means being left behind.
A Vast New Field
Ultimately, the new realities of healthcare – from the effect of the pandemic to the rise of things like telehealth – is truly vast and encompasses all sorts of things. Accordingly, when giving advice on how to adapt to new healthcare realties, we really do need to be broad and talk in terms of general strategies.
If you find yourself a seasoned healthcare professional and are in the position of wanting some kind of career reinvention, then the chances are that you actually need one. There are two options for those in this particular position:
- Fine tune the current position you hold to be more in line with new healthcare innovations.
- Find a new career path that nevertheless builds on the expertise you have garnered over the years.
How to Adapt
Therefore, the best way to advise on adapting to new healthcare realties is to look at these two strategies in turn and explain what they mean in reality.
Fine Tuning Your Current Position
If you hold a particular healthcare role – say, for example, an on-call doctor – you may want to see how you can maintain your role but incorporate new realities into it. For example, you might want to make more extensive use of information technology in order to help with your day-to-day duties. This could be something like online virtual office software for arranging patient notes and prescriptions and delivering those to the right people. You could also make use of telehealth technology to better serve your patients. This could mean less face-to-face contact.
A New Career Path
This advice applies also to those just starting out. This means the various new medical careers that have popped up in recent years as well as others that have changed significantly over time. New medical technology, for example, means new medical technicians. Some of that technology could be related to your field so why not take some courses on its operation, and then move into a new career that has a more assured medium-term future? For those on the admin side of things, medical insurance is a whole class of work that has been fairly recently developed. This could well be your next move.
Ultimately, healthcare needs to be at the forefront of technology because it is the best technology which delivers the best health care. This means adaptation – or the imperative to sink or swim.