Essential workers are taking center stage post-pandemic. Healthcare leaders are addressing staff shortages before they happen again. If you’re ready for a challenge, entry-level career opportunities are waiting for you in the medical field. It’s a chance to support your family, neighbors, and community as we reimagine a more effective, equitable and accessible healthcare system.
What Is an Essential Healthcare Worker?
Being an essential worker means you’re needed. Without you, patients don’t get the safe and effective care they deserve. The mightiest foundations, after all, are laid at the ground level.
In the community at large, police officers, truck drivers, farmers and road workers are considered essential employees. Within the medical community, examples include paramedics, x-ray technicians, pharmacists, medical assistants, and nurses.
Two of the most rewarding roles to train for are medical assisting and vocational nursing. Facilities learned the hard way that healthcare can’t happen without them.
Are you Ready for an Essential Healthcare Career?
A career as an essential healthcare worker has both personal and practical rewards, including:
A Promising Job Market
The US Bureau of Labor Statistics expects strong growth within the medical field. Poised for its biggest expansion in history, the healthcare system will add hundreds of thousands of new jobs in just the next decade.
While employees in other industries are being replaced by automation, medicine always needs a human touch. As an essential worker, a vibrant job market guarantees a brighter future.
Personal Fulfillment
Life’s too short not to feel gratified by what you do. If your current job leaves you feeling empty or unfulfilled, you’ll make an impact in healthcare.
Choose a role that fits your strengths and interests, we’re all happiest when our talents are fully utilized and appreciated. Healthcare is a supportive, team-based environment in which your contributions will be recognized and valued, whatever they are.
Lifestyle-Friendly Training Options
Many careers in healthcare require a college degree. However, if you don’t have two or more years to sit in a classroom, you can become a medical assistant in as few as nine months. Vocational nurse training takes only a year, and you’ll qualify for many of the same positions as your college-educated colleagues. Flexible scheduling options make these programs even more lifestyle-friendly, so you don’t have to choose between your home life and educational goals.
Preparation for Licensure and Certifications
Vocational school training programs prepare students for licensure and certification. Instructors teach what you need and nothing else, so graduates are ready to pass the nursing boards or the Certified Medical Assistant exam.
Credentialed job applicants have a competitive advantage in the job market, impressing employers with proven skills. Your professional license or certificate is the key to professional growth.
What Do Vocational Nurses Do?
Vocational nurses provide direct, hands-on care in healthcare facilities, while medical assistants manage clinical and administrative tasks in office settings.
As a vocational nurse, you will:
- Serve as the doctor’s eyes and ears, monitoring patients’ physical condition
- Take vital signs: temperature, blood pressure, pulse and respirations
- Assist patients with activities of daily living, such as bathing, dressing, and grooming
- Administer oral, topical, rectal, inhaled, and intravenous medications
- Perform complex wound care
- Insert urinary catheters
- Give tube feedings
- Check blood sugar and give insulin injections
- Collect urine, stool, and sputum samples for laboratory testing
- Manage medical equipment, including ventilators, oxygen tanks, CPAP machines, and nebulizers
- Help with therapist-designed exercise plans
- Offer patients emotional and spiritual support
- Educate patients and their families about health topics
- Supervise paraprofessional caregivers
- Document care
What Do Medical Assistants Do?
A medical assistant’s duties include:
- Managing providers’ schedules
- Triaging urgent phone calls
- Rooming patients
- Updating medical records
- Taking vital signs
- Performing diagnostic tests: urinalysis, electrocardiography, and pacemaker checks
- Collecting biological samples
- Drawing blood
- Assisting with minor surgical procedures
- Basic wound care
- Sterilizing instruments
- Coding insurance forms
- Billing and collections
- Stocking exam room shelves
- Ordering office and medical supplies
- General office duties, including faxing, filing, and answering phones
- Patient education
Where Do They Work?
Both medical assistants and vocational nurses have distinct roles.
Medical Assistant Role
Medical assistants work in healthcare office settings. Most are employed in private practices, but they’re increasingly working in hospitals and clinics.
Medical assistants don’t provide personal care in acute care facilities because of patient acuity, nurses are better trained to care for sicker people. However, they can work as unit clerks, patient representatives, medical records specialists and administrative assistants. Their medical background is invaluable, even in mostly clerical positions.
Vocational Nurse Role
Vocational nurses work in healthcare facilities. Once a fixture in doctor’s offices, they’ve largely been replaced by medical assistants. Today, they’re employed in hospitals, clinics, home health agencies and long-term care settings in which medical assistants have fewer employment opportunities. Their blend of skills is ideal for nursing homes and assisted living centers where state rules typically require licensed caregivers.
Who Do They Work With?
Both medical assistants and vocational nurses work with many of the same medical professionals. However, the list varies for each.
Medical Assistants Work With
Medical assistants engage with:
- Doctors
- Nurses
- Administrators
- Billing specialists
- Laboratory technicians
- Clerical support staff
- Vendors
- Maintenance workers
- Patients and families
With more generalized training, they work in the same circles as both the clinical and administrative teams. One-on-one time with patients is limited, however, compared to nursing. You’ll spend more time on the phone with clients than you’ll see them in person.
A medical assistant who wants to spend more time with patients can work in a hospital day surgery unit, an oncology infusion practice, or an urgent care clinic where the lines between clinical and clerical responsibilities are blurred.
Vocational Nurses Work With
Because vocational nurses have a distinctly clinical role, they interact more with doctors and other nurses than the administrative team. In a medical facility, they spend the majority of their time with patients, monitoring for changes in condition while tending to their needs.
Vocational nurses who prefer administrative responsibilities can still find jobs in private practices or public health departments. Or they can climb the career ladder in long-term care to reach a supervisory position.
Among the many careers in healthcare, practical nursing and medical assisting are among the most flexible. You can fit in or break the mold.
Final Thoughts
Essential workers in any field are the bedrock of their industries, but more so in healthcare where roles are clearly defined by regulation and training. If the pandemic taught us anything, it’s that quality care doesn’t start at the top. It’s built on a strong foundation.
Medical Assistant Program
The Medical Assistant Training Program at CyberTex Institute of Technology takes great care of you by providing hands-on training, practical experience and the support it takes to get started in a medical assisting career without spending years in school. You will learn the basics of both clinical and administrative skills, and prepare to work in physician’s offices, hospitals, and other medical facilities.
Licensed Vocational Nurse
Classes for the Vocational Nursing program are conducted in a student-friendly atmosphere conveniently located in Austin, Texas. After graduating from the Licensed Vocational Nursing program, students can apply to take the National Council Licensure Examination for Practical Nurses (NCLEX-PN), become a Licensed Vocational Nurse (LVN), and start their exciting new career immediately.
Contact us today to learn more about our Austin and Killeen campuses.