How can I work in health care but not be a nurse?
There are plenty of ways to turn your passion for service into well-paying professional and clinical careers in health care. You might choose an area such as child and family services, public health, hospital administration, or medical office management.
Where could I work with a degree in Child and Family Services?
Earning a degree focused on child and family services prepares you to work with children, adults and families throughout their lifespan in a broad range of settings. You'll gain experience helping families through every major developmental period from birth to adolescence, from mid-life to older adults. Your workplace might be pediatric healthcare community settings, human and social service agencies, hospitals, or programs for youth, adolescents, and elders.
What's the difference between a Child and Family Services and social work?
Social work and family services programs share a common goal of helping families and individuals, but they differ in that social workers are generalists and child and family services professionals are specialists. Think of social work as a broad profession where licensed practitioners help people improve their lives. And think of child and family services as a menu of focused, clinically trained professions.
An undergraduate social work program gives students beginning generalist social work practice across a range of situations. But undergraduate child and family services students choose a concentration such as pediatric health care or aging and gerontology, or they may specialize in family and community services or study to become a Certified Child Life Specialist. These clinical programs require plenty of hands-on experience -- a 75-hour practicum and a 400-hour fulltime internship.
The graduate Master of Social Work at OHIO has a macro-level clinical focus and trains social workers to work with rural families and communities. Our Child and Family Services (M.S.) offers an in-depth study of children, adults, and families along the life span. The Child Life concentration helps normalize the hospitalization experience for children and families, and students get clinical training in our simulation lab, 75 hours of volunteer experiences, and a 600-hour child life internship. The Family Gerontology concentration focus their careers on advocating for and helping older adults and their family members.
What careers can I pursue with a Public Health degree?
Professionals working in public health are doing a variety of jobs essential to community and global health, including epidemiology, health education, and health policy. Master of Public Health students might direct their efforts to studying a specific health behavior among a specified population or improving the capacity of public health organizations to meet the needs of rural and underserved communities.
How do I prepare for a career in hospital administration or medical office management?
Health service administration professional roles require both a keen understanding of the health care industry as well as managerial skills. A wide variety of entry-level positions include non-clinical staff positions in hospitals, physician practices, managed care organizations, home health care agencies, community health centers, and other emerging health organizations.
As health professionals begin to climb the career ladders in hospitals and other organizations, it's common to add an online Master of Health Administration. An M.H.A. prepares early- to mid-career professionals for leadership positions in a variety of U.S. health organizations and teaches them the needed competencies to develop strategic solutions to health care challenges – today and into the future.
What's the difference between an MBA and a Master of Health Administration?
Both an MBA student and a Master of Health Administration student might study the interrelationships between cost, quality, and access variables, but a health administration student will focus specifically on how these factors impact the health care system. A health administration master's degree will delve deeply into significant pieces of health care legislation: Medicare, Medicaid, HIPAA, PPACA, and EMTALA. And when they analyze financial data, students will couple with community health data and trends in support of informed decisions impacting the overall performance of health care organizations.
Given the current complexity of the health care delivery system and its related programs and services, effective leadership is a critical success factor, and many health administration graduate students pursue even more specialized study to suite their career pathways, such as health care leadership, business analytics, project management, and quality improvement.