My SO is considering a career change from a paramedic to a radiology/surgical/etc technician. The programs for para-professional certificates all, of course, boast that there are plenty of jobs for their graduates, but it’s a scary thing to make a big change in this economy.
Any opinions, experiences, advices very welcome!
yes because the US population is aging. Also there are more sick people than before - diabetes and obesity are 2 examples.
It should be, the BLS says health care jobs will grow faster than average for the next decade.
http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos100.htm#outlook
However my understanding is that in this recession even fields which normally have good hiring prospects (nursing) are seeing hiring freezes. A coworker knows a nursing teacher who lamented that many of her students would have trouble finding jobs when they graduate. No idea if that is nationwide or just in that geographic area.
My view is that as medical costs in the US grow dramatically and become more and more unobtainable for 90% of us, fields like robotics and outsourcing will be used to make health care less labor intensive (or use the labor of people in other countries). But that is just my assumption, no idea if it’ll play out in the real world. And if it does I assume more of that will go after the highest cost labor (physicians) rather than the technicians.
Actually, certain types of technician may be the easiest to outsource: the doctor needs to see the patient, but the guy reading the Xray can be anywhere. The guy doing the blood work needs to be local.
Radiology techs are the people who get you on the exam table and shoot the picture. The person who READS the x-ray is an actual doctor (a radiologist). I mention this because I know some radiologists who kind of dislike it when people think they only went to 2 years at the local community college when they actually went through eight years of school plus a residency. It does happen a lot. 
It is true that some places are now using radiologists overseas to read x-rays over the internet because it’s cheaper for them than using American doctors, though.
They sometimes use doctors overseas to look at x rays for overnight shifts in the ER. It’s easier to get a guy in Australia to work during the day then it is to get a local doc to work late at night, especially in a small town.
If I may add though, essentially all “final reads” on x-rays or other medical images acquired in the United States are eventually interpreted and signed off on by an American board certified radiologist. So, that radiologist in “India,” might provide final reads on that film, but he or she completed a radiology residency and possibly a fellowship in the United States. Even if they really are reading from India, that’s probably because they were born in India, completed a residency in the United States, and have now returned to India to service the overnight market and because a radiologist salary that would provide you a comfortable upper-middle class lifestyle in the United States will obviously have far more purchasing power in India.
A “nighthawk” radiologist is just as likely an American born expat living in Girona, Spain or Sydney, Australia and the only advantage is that the radiologist is interpreting films and providing reports during a time when its natural for humans to be awake and carefully concentrating on an important task, not because they’re any cheaper than having it read the next morning by a radiologist based locally.
At large academic medical centers, its typically still a radiology resident staying up overnight on call to interpret studies from that center.
I can only provide a personal perspective, but my wife and I are both in health care. She works for a hospital as a live Spanish-English translator/interpreter in their behavioral health/psychiatric care clinic. Among other things, I train physicians and other HCPs in GCP and HIPAA compliance for human clinical trials.
In 2009, my wife’s hospital instituted a hiring moratorium, which didn’t actually halt the hiring process, but slowed it down significantly. This was lifted late in 2010. Late last year, they capped merit salary increases to 2%, which is where it currently stands.
My organization felt the squeeze in mid 2010, as clients consolidated some programs and pulled back on others, which is the first time this has occurred in our 36 year history, so we instituted a wage and hiring freeze. 3 weeks ago, both were lifted.
In a nutshell, I think the health care industry as a whole is generally effected by economic downturns later, rebounds quicker, and to a lesser degree, than other industries.
Like Lavenderviolet said.
I am the guy who takes the X-rays, and that can’t be farmed out.
I would say, though, that some markets are flooded with newly fledged radiologic technologists. There is an X-ray school where I work, and the recent graduates are finding it difficult to secure full-time positions.
I’m not sure about other markets, though. There seem to be a lot of postings for techs in USAJobs ( Rad Techs, for example) (the US Go’vt Job Search Site), but I don’t know how saturated the private sector is.
(Note that many of those jobs are part-time, and may not reflect an actual, open position. And some are overseas.)
Surgical techs are something that my hospital is continually in need of. Less so rad techs, although the specialty modalities are in higher demand (mammo, for example).
The old chesnut that there will always be openings for nurses is just not true. As someone mentioned upthread, new grads in some sreas are having trouble finding jobs. We have a number of new grads taking CNA positions because that’s what they can get. I know the tide will turn at some point, but it just ahsn’t here yet.
HIT is a field that is growing, along with medical coding. (I mean a certified, credentialed coder, not someone who went to a “medical billing and coding” course at a proprietary school). As we move from ICD-9 into higher, more specialized coding systems, people need to be able to keep up with the coding requirements. That is, however, technology and not allied health, so perhaps he would not be interested. (I put it out there, though, because others may be).
I remembered yesterday another allied health field that has some tremendous growth predicted—respiratory therapy. We have a cohort of employees going through an Associate’s program while still working full time. It’s challenging for them, but each one stands to increase their earnings a lot if they finish.