Strong medicine: Health care opportunities continue to surge in 2020
Careers in health care have been on the rise for years, usually making up a majority of the fastest-growing jobs in the country, according to the U.S. Department of Labor, and 2020 is no different.
“It doesn’t take a genius to figure out why,” says Jill Black, 71, a retired nurse who worked at St. Alexius Medical Center in Hoffman Estates and Cook County Hospital in Chicago, among others, during a nearly 40-year career in nursing. “People get sick, they get older, they need more care. It’s just a natural need.”
Black, who retired 10 years ago, says she’s been on the other side of the health care equation in recent years, spending time in Tampa, Florida, hospitals and rehab centers as she assisted her husband to recover from a stroke. She also had a “brief but scary” stay herself, recovering from pneumonia two years ago. “It’s a humbling thing to be on the other side of the curtain but I have to tell you, it makes me proud to be a nurse but also glad I’m retired because things have really changed — a lot more tracking, surveying, catering to the sorts of things we didn’t have to do 20 or 30 years ago.”
Still, Black says she’s impressed by the work done by not only nurses but by others in the health care system. “The entire process is so much more specialized then it used to be,” she says. “There are people doing things we either didn’t do in the past or that were handled by docs or nurses.”
The specialization Black refers to is why the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics projects the employment of health care occupations to grow 14 percent through 2028. “An aging population is the primary reason for the growth but there has been an awareness of people now have of their own health that they didn’t have in the 1970s and ’80s,” says career consultant Pia Greco, who specializes in administrative health-care careers in Dallas, Texas. “As people focus more on their own well-being, they want to be proactive with their own bodies. People work out and stay in shape and then they take it a step further. They want to learn more about what they can do to live a longer, healthier life.”
An active approach
Tobias Anderson, a 36-year-old financial analyst in New York, says he’s working to become certified as a personal trainer because as he worked to improve his own health, he realized he could help improve the health of others. “I’m a late bloomer when it comes to fitness,” says Anderson. “I was about 100 pounds overweight until about two years ago. I found a great trainer, changed my diet, committed to a new lifestyle and decided to change my life.”
As he found success with his new approach to his diet and exercise regime, Anderson says he realized he wanted to help others do the same. “I’m not trying to be anyone’s guru or anything but I’m the poster child for how a lifestyle change can improve your life.”
People power
Anderson says he has no real timeline for when he’ll make the switch in careers full time but admits he’s fine with taking an eventual cut in pay to do something he really loves. “I work with numbers in both fields, and in training, like in finance, those numbers have a connection to people,” he says. “Either I’m using numbers to help people make money or I’m using them to help them live a healthier, more fulfilled life. And I’ve decided that I’m going with the latter approach.”
Although her career in nursing has a dotted-line relationship to a career as a trainer, Black says she thinks Anderson is making a wise choice. “When you work with someone to improve their health, you see a real, tangible outcome,” she says. “Granted, you’re not successful 100 percent of the time but when you are, it means a lot.”