The St. Louis American Foundation recently put health care leaders in touch with those with an interest in health careers ? men and women of all ages who are at different stages of their careers and are looking for new jobs or for a change.
One hopeful is a teacher; another, a young man who works in manufacturing; a third is a middle-aged woman fresh out of medical coding school. They and many others recently attended the after-work “Is a Health Career for You?” informational session at the Moonrise Hotel in the University City Loop.
The foundation’s health outreach mission includes increased health education, health literacy and access to health careers.
“We are encouraging African Americans to pursue careers in the area of health care at all levels,” said Dina M. Suggs, senior vice president of The St. Louis American.
“Our country is becoming increasingly diverse, and the diversity of health care workers has not kept pace with that of the U.S. population. The health care industry has been less devastated by the recession than many others and represents a good opportunity for many.”
The setting felt like an elegant happy hour with smooth music, food and beverages. But the colorful staircase inside the Moonrise lighted the path to a packed room of career seekers who want advancement and greater opportunities in health for which they may be uniquely suited. They received ideas from a diversity executive, a pharmacist and a nurse, each sharing his or her career path.
They first pointed out there are plenty of support professionals in health care, beyond doctors and nurses. In fact, the majority of people who take care of us as nation are not nurses or doctors. As health therapists, technicians, and other medical specialists age out, retire out and die out, who will take of the Baby Boomers and Generation Xers when they are sick, reassure them when they are in pain and help them rehabilitate back to good health?
“You’ve got to have somebody who is going to handle people who need x-rays, who is going to handle drawing blood, lab work, somebody to handle medical records, to manage physical therapy and those sort of things,” said Brenda Battle, director of the Center for Diversity and Cultural Competence at Barnes-Jewish Hospital.
Health care careers are not only for four-year degree or advanced-degree employees. Some workers have a technical profession or an associate’s degree.
“People miss the fact that you’ve got to have an x-ray technician – you’ve got to have a lab technician, you’ve got to have a physical therapy technician,” Battle said.
“These are well-paid jobs that take a short period of time to acquire the appropriate skill. In some cases, you can get these skills within a year, six months, a year-and-a-half, two years.”
And there is much more to a pharmacist job than filling prescriptions at the neighborhood drug store.
“You see them rounding with the physicians a lot of the times, making recommendations, even making medicines – the mortar and pestle,” said Steve Player, PharmD, manager of the Barnes-Jewish Pharmacy Department and director of diversity at the St. Louis College of Pharmacy.
“We make IVs, we make the dye that you get injected so they can visualize specific arteries, we are in the O.R. We are providing medications for patients going into surgery ? all those areas and more.”
He shared the story of a custodian who is an African immigrant who initially had limited English but had a vision for himself and motivation to move up the ranks to a pharmacy technician.
“We have a program in our department if you are a pharmacy tech or a student with us, we pay 100 percent of your tuition while you are in pharmacy school,” Player said.
You don’t have to know exactly what you want to be when you grow up – if you are 20 or even if you are 40. Plus, you can change your mind, especially when you know yourself, and know that you want to make a positive difference in the lives of others … and get paid for it.
“There have been times in my career when I thought about trying another career. I’ve never hated nursing or never felt burned out, but I just wanted to try something different,” said Gina Heard, RN, a nurse at Barnes-Jewish Hospital.
“And I am so thankful that I didn’t for a number of reasons. In health care, I know I can always find a job and it was well worth the ‘seven-year plan’ that I took, even though that is not what I intended when I started out.”
Heard also has a master’s degree she obtained through Barnes’ tuition assistance program.
“I did not pay a dime for my master’s degree,” she said. “There are so many other opportunities to further your education or to obtain different levels of different health care professions at Barnes and at other institutions also.”
“When you get on the inside a health care organization, the opportunities to pursue other careers is available to you, because we need to increase the diversity within our staff and we need to increase the number of people available to perform these jobs,” Battle said.
“Whatever you want to do, whatever you are thinking about doing, go for it – and don’t let other things get in your way,” Heard said.
Funding for the health careers session came from the Missouri Foundation for Health. Another health careers session is being planned for early next year following the holidays.
