Speaker 1: Hi everyone, it's Professor Ashley, I am your favorite professor for healthcare administration and this video is going to be a really good one because right now I'm going to go ahead and go through five different things that I really, really wish I knew before I started a whole career in healthcare administration. The very first thing, and this is probably of the most important things that I really wish I knew because if I did, I would have acted on this, is that I really wish that I knew that I should have been working somewhere in the healthcare field while I was going to school. As soon as I realized that I was going to be a healthcare administrator or I was going to do this master's program, and I at the time had no paid work experience in this field and I started a master's degree program, which is a big mistake. Not a mistake to get the degree, but it was a mistake to not start working in a job while I was getting my master's degree. The bottom line here is that no matter what in healthcare, especially when you're working on the clerical side or like the business side of healthcare, you will start from the very bottom in the very beginning. Doesn't matter what your education is, you will start from the very bottom. So if you've never had a job in healthcare administration or healthcare at all, any kind of clerical job within healthcare, you are going to be at an entry level position when you begin. Now that can happen after your master's degree and there's nothing wrong with that, but you're just wasting your time. Okay, so you should start before so that once you have your degree, you have two years hopefully of experience and even more years of experience if you started working in healthcare before that. I didn't know that. I had no work experience, yes I had volunteer experience, but I did not have actual paid work real experience in healthcare, the business of healthcare in a clerical setting or anything like that. So I had to start from the very bottom after I had a master's degree. So I was working for a minimum wage in the very beginning and then I had to work my way up. So the second thing that I really, really wish I knew before starting my career in healthcare administration is that it's so important for you to have a mentor. You need to get a mentor as soon as possible, no matter where you are, what stage you are in this whole career journey, whether you're still in the education, you might still be in the beginning of your education, maybe your AA, your bachelor's or even you're getting your master's right now, that's fine. If you are in the education phase, still need a mentor, but if you are just starting in your career or even maybe you are somewhat at like of a mid level stage in your career, you still should have a mentor, someone who's fought through everything. And so they have the knowledge, they have the experience that can pass that on to you. They can guide you, they can recommend things that you can do, they can recommend events that you should do. They can introduce you to important people, they can advise you, they can help you deal with difficult people within healthcare because as administrators, you will be dealing with physicians, you'll be dealing with stakeholders at some point if you go to that level and it's going to get difficult. So having a mentor at every stage of this career is super important. The third thing I wish I knew would be how to get rid of imposter syndrome and I'm pretty sure everyone experiences this. I experienced this a lot when I was going through my master's degree, when I was going through my undergrad, obviously. But when I was going through my master's degree, I experienced imposter syndrome. I did not think I was as good as anyone in my cohort, I thought they have way more experience than me, way more knowledge and then I graduate and I'm trying to start this career and every step of the way, I keep feeling like I'm not good enough to take on certain responsibilities or even take opportunities that are in front of my face. Somehow I feel like I'm not ready. And so if you ever get at that point where there's an opportunity and you're like, oh, I would, but I think I need, I don't know how to do that yet, I think I need some experience or that's not me yet, I can't be that title, I can't do that thing, don't. You are definitely good enough when you get older and when you get more experience, you're going to understand that a lot of those opportunities weren't actually as big of a deal as you thought they were. You could have handled it. And had you had taken up those opportunities, you clearly would have been in a much better place or a higher position or it would have taken you a little bit further, maybe. So do not let opportunities go because you think you're not good enough or you think you're not ready. Just try it. If you fail, it's not the end of the world. You are exposed to that thing. Exposure is everything. Exposure is everything for growth, not just in healthcare administration, but in life. The fourth thing that I wish I knew prior to getting into healthcare, and this is just sort of a really annoying thing, is that healthcare moves super slow. Healthcare is almost like government, which is really weird. It's weird because in the United States, we have the best medical technology in the world. Our research and development or the money that we dump into research and development is top tier. We throw so much money into research and development and the output is huge, but it's so expensive and there are so many regulations, policies, there's so much bureaucracy in healthcare. And even when it comes down to just healthcare organization, like a hospital, they might not adopt something that could really benefit their way of practice, it could probably reduce medical errors and things like that. They might hold back because they'll be like, oh, well, we have this policy that doesn't allow us to move forward with that. Or it might be like, well, we don't see a very quick return on this investment, so we're not going to go into that just right away. An example of this, because I know I seem like I'm rambling, is a little over a decade ago when healthcare organizations were very encouraged to get EH, to adopt EHR systems, electronic health record systems, especially huge hospitals. But everybody was encouraged, all of them, even the small little practices over there. They're all encouraged to get these EHRs. However, a lot of organizations are like, heck no, we're not going to do that. The thing is, these EHR systems are so huge, they're so expensive. There's a lot of time and energy that it takes to teach everyone, all of the employees, to use it. So there's a huge amount of time that it's going to take. It's like months. Once they get it into their system, everyone's a professional at using this program, and they're all doing really well at it, when do we actually see the return on that investment? So by the time we actually see the return on that investment, it's actually going to be time, more than likely, for us to upgrade this piece of technology, these EHR systems. We're going to have to get a whole new EHR system. So really, a lot of organizations back in the day were looking at EHRs as like, no, this does not benefit us at all. So that's the thing. A lot of these organizations, if they don't see a use for it, or if they don't think that they're going to get their return that quickly, they're not going to do it. In terms of adopting new things and moving healthcare, making it more, like upgrading the technology and whatnot, it does not move as fast as business. So if you really want a fast-paced environment, yeah, healthcare can get crazy, but that's usually on the floor. The actual business side, or the top business side of healthcare kind of moves pretty slow. So my fifth thing that I really wish I knew before I started healthcare, is that I wish I really understood exactly how huge and how broad the field of healthcare administration really is. I don't know about you guys and where you guys are in your research and your career developments, but when I first started this career, I knew it was broad. I get it. It's like an MBA kind of, but for healthcare, you know, I was like that. I was like, oh, you know, healthcare for business. It's like, you do business stuff in healthcare, whatever. But I didn't really understand exactly how broad this thing goes and the different levels it can be. And I'm bringing this up because I get a lot of people contacting me and saying things like I'm completely unable to get a job in healthcare administration with my master's in healthcare administration degree. Then usually when I ask more questions or I come to realize that it's just, you know, there's so much competition and I can't get a job and then, you know, they have to crack some code. No, it's because they're actually, their job search is so narrow. It's wild. They're like typing in things like healthcare administrator. They're looking for jobs that say healthcare administrator or hospital administrator. And the field is so broad. Healthcare administration is not like one job and that's the only job you can get. So there's like five of them at every hospital and that's all. Like if you can't get one of those, then oh well, you wasted your degree. Another thing that I get a lot of questions about is that specific degrees that they should be getting to build a career in healthcare administration. And should I get a degree in global healthcare or should I do health sciences or administration for the health sciences or should I do healthcare administration? Like which one is it? And the thing is, they're all really the same. A lot of different schools, they're going to give you courses that are pretty much like a sprinkle of various different aspects of healthcare but how it's ran as a business. You can really get any degree. Yes, healthcare administration is pretty much the well-known one. That's what an MHA is like equivalent to an MBA but for healthcare. The main thing is learn about how broad this is and figure out exactly where you would like to place yourself. So I just want to go over a few subspecialties within healthcare administration that you can think about and then also I encourage you to look up everything else on Google and figure out what you can find. I know there isn't too much information out there because there aren't very many people putting a lot of information out there besides the universities who are trying to get you to buy their degree but try to look in the space and see what is offered. Just see what your options are. I really encourage you to do that because it will kind of open up your mind and help you realize that you can fit in in so many different areas within healthcare administration. It doesn't have to be just that one healthcare administration job title. I'm going to go over a different bunch of subspecialties within the field and then I'll list a few different job titles within those different fields. A few different subspecialties in healthcare administration would be health information management. You could go into human resource management. There's patient care services, clinical management, there's lab facility management, case management, health insurance and of course there's academia. You could become a professor if you want to. Those are just to name a few because there are so many out there. And then so within these subspecialties, here are a few kind of job examples or job title examples that you may want to consider. They're going to be different depending on your education level and also your years of experience. Just to give you an idea of what you can look for, we got medical office specialist, assistant, manager and director. So those are a bunch of different healthcare administrator titles within a medical office. Then in health information management, you can be a specialist, a technician, a director, a manager, a supervisor and even a team leader. Then within clinical management, you can be a coordinator, you can be a specialist, you can be a manager, you can be an assistant, you can be a director. And then in human resource management, you can be a specialist, you can be a technician, you can be a director, an executive, you can be a manager, you can be a supervisor, you can be an assistant or a team leader. And then in health insurance, you can be a claims analyst, you can be a director, you can be a manager, you can be a specialist, you can be a technician, you can be an agent. There are so many different varieties or so many different job titles out there so do not get stuck on just one. You should actually do some research and figure out what you like better, where you see yourself and then start to reverse engineer how you can get into more of an entry-level position within that subfield. So the bottom line here is please do not get stuck on thinking you're supposed to have a specific title within healthcare administration and then you start sitting around and waiting around and you submit 300 job applications on Indeed and you just wait for them to call you and then you complain that you didn't get an interview. And by the way that's a terrible way to apply for jobs and I will post more content on a better way to apply to these jobs and some tips on getting that interview. That's a future video. I mean if you did get a job that way it's not like it's not gonna happen ever but it's a terrible way it's most likely not gonna happen. If you did get a job that way you're part of the 1% congratulations you're amazing that you won in a million and anyway so I will be posting more on this and I hope that you guys found this very informative and I hope that's really helps you and helps to open up your mind a little bit. Please leave some suggestions in the comments and ask me some questions or something for more content that you want to actually see and I will see you guys next Friday. Peace.