By Sarah R. Predmore, Techniques Contributing Writer
Health technicians help form the backbone of the healthcare industry, but they need a variety of skills to help provide the best care for patients and the best assistance to doctors and physicians.
Surgical technicians have to be able to carefully prepare and sterilize equipment, while having excellent teamwork skills to help operations run smoothly. In drug stores, pharmacy technicians not only need to know medications, but they must also have excellent customer service and computer skills. Likewise, radiology technicians need the mechanical ability and manual dexterity to operate complex equipment, as well as a good beside manner in order to provide the best care for patients. Not only do medical technicians need to be able to multitask, but they must also be meticulous in each task they perform as well.
The need for capable technicians has only increased with time. As the population grows and life expectancy increases, so does the need for health professionals. Furthermore, technological advances increase the need for qualified technicians who are familiar with a variety of equipment. Therefore, programs that train these technicians are more vital than ever.
The U.S. Department of Labor predicts that job opportunities will continue to be favorable in the health technologies. And technicians can earn a good living—in 2002, the average income of a radiology technician was $38,970. Salaries, especially in areas with technician shortages, are expected to increase over time.
With such good job prospects, it’s no wonder that health occupation programs are increasingly competitive. Many secondary students are getting a jumpstart on their postsecondary education through tech prep programs in health technology. These programs not only give students an educational edge, but also allow them to begin to develop relevant skills, while they explore the healthcare field.
Students in the Health Technologies program at Fairfield Career Center, in Carroll, Ohio, not only graduate high school with a better idea of career possibilities in the field, but also with some useful tools for pursuing careers.
The two-year program serves a total of about 90 high school juniors and seniors at any given time. To be eligible, students must be on a college preparatory track and have good grades, particularly in math. However, the program is not merely looking for the highest achievers, says program instructor Anne Conner. As a tech prep program, it is ideal for that B student who was just floating along.
“It gives them career-goal direction,” she explains.
It is a very practical direction, in fact, that prepares students in a number of ways. In their first year of the two-year-long program, students receive Red Cross certifications in first aid, CPR, HIV fundamentals and prevention of disease transmission. In addition, they complete the Nurse Aide Training Program, which is administered by the Ohio Department of Health. Students who pass the test become State Tested Nurse Assistants.
Regardless of whether they are on the diagnostic or therapeutic tracks, all students complete the nurse aide curriculum, says Conner. According to the program’s industry partners, all people working in healthcare should know the kind of bedside care taught in the nurse aide courses—it is relevant to all the field’s occupations.
Conner also teaches her students, regardless of track, employability skills such as how to write an effective resume and cover letter, go on an interview and develop a professional portfolio.
Nor are academic skills neglected; Conner works to ensure that her students learn and retain mathematics. In evaluating the program, Fairfield found that many students could perform higher-level math but would forget how to do the basics such as fractions or percentages.
“Now, our math teachers come in once a week and review the basics with them at the same time that they’re taking the higher-level math,” says Conner. The result is that students are more prepared for postsecondary academics, she adds.
Graduates of the program become Patient Care Assistants, multi-skilled health professionals who can perform basic bedside care such as phlebotomy or electrocardiography, as well as higher-level bedside care such as dressing changes, catheterization or tube feeding.
“This makes them very hirable,” according to Conner. “So, if students choose not to go to school right away, they can get jobs in healthcare very easily.”
Although they leave having already qualified for some entry-level healthcare jobs, most graduates choose to continue their education. The program is geared for college-bound students, and Conner estimates that more than 90 percent enter postsecondary programs either immediately or a few years following graduation.
By articulating with a consortium of nearby colleges, the Health Technologies program eases the transition of its graduates.
“Many of the classes that our students are taking at the high school level, they can receive college credit for,” says Conner. Waiting lists for healthcare programs are notoriously long, but according to Conner, articulation allows Fairfield’s students “to move up a little on the waiting list, because they already have some of the prerequisites that other students have to take once they get to college.”
In fact, she estimates that those graduates who enroll at Columbus State Community College do so with 12 credit hours already under their belts.
Partnerships with local colleges, clinics and hospitals are essential to the success of programs such as Fairfield’s. “It’s very different doing things in the lab versus doing them in real life,” according to Conner.
As part of her introduction to radio-graphy, for instance, she takes students to Children’s Hospital. Clinical experiences “really let the students know if it’s something they want to do. Even if they decide that a particular area is not for them, it was a valuable experience,” she concludes.
Education and industry partnerships are also vital to the Allied Health Occupations program at Pontotoc Ridge Career and Technology Center in Mississippi. Like Fairfield, Pontotoc Ridge is a secondary school program serving mostly juniors and seniors who plan to continue their education in healthcare upon graduation.
Program instructor Jerri Montgomery estimates that more than half of the graduates end up attending the local Itawamba Community College, so it’s not surprising that the college works to ensure the program’s success. It’s a mutually beneficial relationship. While Pontotoc Ridge is able to extend its students’ experiences, Itawamba can ensure that its future students have an adequate introduction to allied health.
For example, “the instructor of the surgical tech program is going to come to my classroom to help the students understand sterile technique and what a sterile field is,” says Montgomery.
Partnerships also allow students to have clinical experiences for which secondary school programs simply do not have the available resources. “I can’t provide all the equipment—the sonogram machines and all that—it’s too expensive,” explains Montgomery. “But I can take them to the hospital’s x-ray department, for instance.”
So, weekly clinicals give students an opportunity to observe a wide variety of health occupations—from dentists to optometrists to veterinarians. Their industry partners are “very supportive,” she notes.
These experiences not only give students a chance to see what types of careers best suit them, but also an honest look at some of the challenges and rewards of working in the field.
“It’s a very demanding field,” says Montgomery. Healthcare jobs usually require working shifts that include nights, weekends and holidays. “It is very physically demanding,” she adds. “You have to be able to lift patients and maneuver different types of equipment.”
But she says that her students are drawn to healthcare for both the personal and financial rewards. It’s a lucrative field with a steady job market, she admits, but they try to show students that that’s not the only reason to go into the health occupations. Instead, she says, the program helps students recognize the challenges of the profession, while showing them that for the right people, “the rewards are in and of themselves.” In other words, it can be an ideal career track for those who are dedicated to helping others.
But success requires not only dedication to others, but also careful training. And Pontotoc Ridge is doing its best to teach students the basics that will be the foundation of their continued education.
“We work to make sure that our students are strong academically,” says Montgomery. For instance, she uses her pharmacology unit to help students learn math. She also has her students practice their writing skills by recording information about, and reactions to, each clinical experience in their personal journals.
These skills are practical and useful for their futures, according to Montgomery. “You need to be able to multitask when you’re in health careers, because you need to juggle several different things at the same time and get it right, because someone’s life depends on it.”
The surgical technology program at the College of Southern Idaho (CSI) in Twin Falls is the kind of program that these tech prep students are gearing up for. Having completed an allied health or certified nurse assistant training program definitely helps prospective students get admitted, says Janet Milligan, program director and assistant professor.
The competition is especially tight for an award-winning program such as the one at CSI. “Last year, we had 84 applicants, but we can only take 16,” says Milligan.
Those admitted must be truly dedicated; it’s a full-time program that runs for 11 months and requires 35 credit hours of surgical technology. Graduates receive a technical certificate and typically earn between $12 and $15 per hour in their first surgical tech jobs, according to Milligan.
However, she points out that most successful students are not driven by the financial rewards. “I find that personal satisfaction is much more important to my students than the wage they’re making,” she says. She gives examples of how a surgical tech might help a surgeon to preserve a patient’s eyesight or assist the surgeon during trauma to save a life.
That said, a feeling of satisfaction alone does not make a successful surgical tech. It’s a web of various interconnected skills, according to Milligan. While techs need to be adroit with their hands, the most successful must also be inquisitive, organized and excellent communicators. They need to be flexible and adept at problem solving, she adds.
The ability to work well in a team is key to success, according to Milligan, but very challenging to teach. So, she fosters cooperation among her students from day one by taking them to CSI’s challenge (or ropes) course.
“Teamwork is one of those soft skills that’s hard to teach the class,” she says. “ I can teach them to scrub and gown and glove, but I can’t teach them to group up and study well together... but the ropes course helps.”
As a result, students learn the kind of team building that she believes will serve them in their careers.
Milligan has also been very resourceful in teaching her students the “hard” skills associated with surgical technology. For instance, to help them learn proper suturing techniques, she has students make baby quilts.
Suturing requires “a very specific organized routine, and it’s cumbersome, so it takes a while to learn,” she explains. So, she has students use their suturing tools to stitch together the quilts. They act “just like they’re in surgery; they have to put in a stitch with a curved needle, tie a surgeon’s knot and cut the stitch with suture scissors.”
After the students have mastered the technique, the class donates the quilts to the community.
Milligan also helps develop her students’ hands-on skills in the program’s advanced lab. It’s a mock operating room that allows students to simulate surgical experiences and hone their problem-solving skills. The lab is only five years old, and Milligan describes it as “spectacular.”
But even with a spectacular lab at their disposal, she emphasizes how important it is for students to have outside clinical experiences. The program has an extensive network of partnerships with local clinics, says Milligan, and the students have an onsite partner with whom they scrub in every day.
“So we really rely on their staff to become part-time teachers and teach these students the craft,” she notes. The hospital sites also provide additional equipment and soft supplies for use in the program’s lab.
Kimberly-Clark Health Care has been a great resource for surgical supplies as well. “They sent us thousands of dollars’ worth of equipment,” says Milligan appreciatively. Contributions such as these “save these students a boatload of money in lab fees,” she adds. Currently, the program requires no lab fee at all.
The hospitals’ assistance offers its own rewards as well. “Working with these techs for a whole year lets them see the cream of the crop,” says Milligan, which can help them in determining whom they will hire in the future. But, she notes, it really is a hard decision for them to make, because the sites have been so effective in training students that all the graduates are good candidates.
Luckily, graduates have many options. There is a national shortage of surgical technicians, and the job has a high turnover rate. Some of that turnover is due to the stress associated with the job, but it also has to do with the large number of young women in the profession who quit to have and raise children, according to Milligan. So, graduates face a promising job market.
CSI graduates have been so successful that Gritman Medical Center in Moscow, Idaho, has hired about one graduate a year over the last few years, according to Director of Surgery Dennis Bell.
“CSI graduates are very well versed in techniques of scrubbing,” he says. “They are an absolute joy to work with.”
Across the United States, in hospitals such as Gritman, medical technicians are putting their highly developed skills to use to help care for patients and save lives. While some techs have known since their high school years that they were interested in healthcare and completed programs such as those at Fairfield and Pontotoc Ridge, others may have enrolled in programs such as CSI’s surgical technology later in life in order to switch careers.
Regardless, to be successful, they must all have that unique combination of hard and soft skills. They must be organized but flexible, meticulous but personable, and informed but eager to always learn more.
If they can manage to juggle these qualities and handle the pressures that accompany healthcare occupations, the rewards can be great. They are virtually guaranteed to find jobs that are lucrative. But, according to their experienced instructors, they will find something even more important in their futures: satisfaction in being able to help others in fundamental and meaningful ways. And that’s a priceless reward.
- Techniques May 2005 Issue -
