Everyone wants a successful and professional career that preferably lands them a fulfilling and well paying role. The healthcare industry is one such sector that has high promises when it comes to job satisfaction and career growth. However, you don’t necessarily have to become a doctor or a nurse to get into healthcare. There are positions available on the administrative side, as most healthcare managers prefer working on operational aspects of the organization instead of direct care.
However, after successfully acquiring your degree, it’s natural to be curious about the potential offers. A degree in health management may be the smartest choice for your professional life as you can access numerous careers, but also work towards starting your private practice.
Excited to begin your journey? Let’s take a dive into the career options you’ll have after completing your degree in healthcare leadership. :
- What Does It Mean to Be A Health Manager?
Healthcare is an expensive business. These numbers are only possible when there is a robust management system intact, and this is where health management comes into the picture. The 21st century has made it more convenient to get your desired program. By enrolling in a Healthcare Leadership Online Short Course, you get to learn effective approaches for leading healthcare teams. Additionally, in exchange for a reasonable price, you also pick up the soft skills you need to distinguish yourself from other managers, paving your career path towards becoming a certified expert.
Working in healthcare administration is a multifaceted job. To add to this, you’ll also have to build a synergy with your team, while monitoring and managing various aspects of different medical departments. These aspects include hiring the best professionals for patients, ensuring accurate patient data, maintaining hospital funds smartly, and keeping up with technology. Whether you’re working in a public setting or a private facility, you have to ensure the workflow is smooth, your team communication is strong, and Identifying roadblocks and frictions in your team’s workflow. .
Skills Needed By a Healthcare Manager
Healthcare managers need to have a strong foundation to build their skills set and work effectively. These skills are not only limited to managers within the healthcare industry, but also apply to managers in other industries.
With that said, let’s have a look at some of these skill sets.
- Effective Communication
Since a manager’s role is to liaison between executives, patients, and the staff, they need to communicate effectively with all three groups. This means the manager should alter their communication style and adopt a diplomatic approach while also offering solutions on the go.
- Motivating Leadership
Managers are often looked at as leaders as they’re the central node that connects all personnel in an organization. Stakeholders expect managers to bring improvements and streamline workflow processes, while managing all operation level tasks.
Hence, it’s not enough for managers to communicate with staff and doctors, they also need to keep the workforce motivated.
- Deepen their Knowledge Base
Managers working in either a private or a public healthcare organization must learn names of medical equipment, procedures, and medical jargon. Why? Because maintaining this equipment is within their scope (though at a superficial role), and they must oversee its proper usage.
Furthermore, the manager must ensure that all safety protocols regarding sensitive medical equipment are followed at all times.
- Strong Financial Background
Managers often need to look at budget spreadsheets, medical bills, and cash flow statements. Hence, job vacancies for this position require managers to have an intermediate or advanced understanding of financial concepts to identify loopholes. This is especially true for procurement, insurance repayments, refunds, tax, etc.
- Show compassion while still being professional
Within this role, it’s important for healthcare managers to adopt a balanced approach towards patients, vendors, stakeholders, and staff. It is worth noting that patients (or the attendee) are under stress and they should be dealt with appropriately.
On the other hand, all staff members should adopt a professional approach and concur towards maintaining quality standards.
- Adaptive to Technology
Technology is prevalent in most hospital/clinic practices, and it would be wise to hire a manager that understands the impact of integrating it efficiently.
Even though technology minimizes the risk of human error, there’s still a strong chance of it malfunctioning. This is where a manager/hospital staff needs to substitute a malfunctioning device and resolve patient-related conflicts before the situation escalates.
Now that we’ve looked at some of the skills required by a healthcare manager, let’s look at a few career options for healthcare managers.
- Options Within Health Management
Your degree will allow you to work in specific specialties, especially if you don’t want to be a CEO. Being a manager is about leadership, and even if you’re limited to one department, you can still exercise your right as a superior. Here are some fields within health management you can look into:
- Clinical Research Manager
Clinical research is a thorough process. The method has many layers since these trials are necessary before a new drug, treatment technique, or vaccine hits the market. Your job as a research manager is to ensure that the entire project is ready to commence. It includes channeling sufficient government-provided funds that need to be accounted for, having the appropriate patients, a timeline of the research’s sequence, and consulting a clinical manager if there is an error or anomaly. You also need to ensure the trial gets ethically carried out and that every volunteer knows their rights. Additionally, you may need to test new machinery or send the finished drug sample for further testing in some cases.
- Pharmaceutical Quality Manager
There are over 450 generic pharmaceutical companies in the US. Your responsibility is to ensure that most of these companies follow the prescribed safety protocol in producing medication. You conduct reviews on medication getting processed, audit the quality, and train staff on handling and packaging. You also have to assess the ingredients used and who their suppliers are, ensuring all raw material comes from approved sources. Therefore, along with your degree in health management, you may want to major in biochemistry or pharmacy.
- Public Health Manager
Public health is another department in the healthcare sector. This field focuses on community wellness and health. So while public health nurses and researchers work on educating and guiding the population, you need to make sure that every public health program is running on due course. This includes developing the budget every program will need and the number of workers per team.
Every educational and vaccine project needs to follow an ethical route, such as the patient’s consent, explaining the medication, and administering it following the protocol. You may also arrange for screening tests and flu shots for the program. However, once these health campaigns conclude, your responsibility will include safely discarding needles, drugs, and vials. The marketing aspect also falls on you. Therefore, you’ll have to bring your A-game to edit videos, give interviews and talk to the media.
- Nursing Home Administrator
These senior folks need a good nursing home to live out their retirement days peacefully. As a nursing home administrator, you can bring this peace to your clients. Your job is primarily logistics, from handling the finance and billing to ensuring you have the right people for the job. You also need to advertise your facility and market its core features to get an excellent public image.
Clients and their families will also look to you for information on the establishment’s programs, so make sure you’re well-read, including details on the payment package. The building’s maintenance, upkeep, and refilling of medicinal, food, and snacks stock also come under your jurisdiction.
Final Thoughts
Health management is the field if you like working in healthcare by expressing your business-like qualities. Once you get your degree and start your career, the world is your oyster. You can align yourself with the responsibilities of a hospital CEO and manage an entire establishment on your own, or you can choose to work in a more precise manner. This includes managing clinical research by supervising all the trials, becoming a pharmaceutical quality manager, and ensuring only potent drugs go into the mainstream market.
Outside the hospital walls, you can work in public health to manage the cost of providing community wellness or take up your position as a leader in a nursing home and look after elderly clients. Your managerial skills will be highlighted no matter what path you take, so choose a niche you’re comfortable looking after.
