There are literally hundreds of career options when it comes to the health sciences. From front-line patient care to research to record keeping, there are so many possible career paths that considering them all might just make you sick with anxiety.
The cure? Knowledge. And that is just what the organizers behind the 2015 Health Science Career Information Expo hope to impart.
Scheduled from 11:30 a.m.-1 p.m., Tuesday, Sept. 15 at the Central Park Campus Conference Center, the expo is designed to give students and the general public a better idea of what each of Collin College’s health science programs entails and what they can expect in the professional world.
Program directors from all of Collin College’s health science programs will be on hand to answer questions about their fields. Attendees will get the chance to learn the benefits and challenges associated with each field, and talk with career counselors to help identify a health science career that works best for them.
Programs represented will include: dental hygiene, emergency medical technician/paramedic, fire science, health information management, nursing, polysomnographic technology, respiratory care, surgery technology, central sterile processing and the college’s continuing education health sciences programs.
“The whole idea here is to help students get more information, to learn about job tasks and learn about the demands of the field, so that when they make a choice it is a better choice,” expo organizer Pam Love-White said.
The decision is an important one, Love-White said, because too often students set their sights on one career path without considering whether it is a good fit for them.
“I have seen a lot of students struggle,” she said. “They believe they want to go into some kind of health science career, but they don’t really know much about them. They only know about nurses or paramedics. They don’t know the variety or the different skills they take or the demands of each of our programs.”
She said there is nothing more disappointing for students than spending three years working on pre-requisites, applying and getting into a program, then dropping in their first semester because it was not what they thought it would be.
“We have multiple professions under the health sciences umbrella,” Dr. Abe Johnson, dean of Academic Affairs – Health Sciences, Emergency Services, Natural Sciences and Physical Education, said. “The skill set for each of those varies.”
Dr. Johnson said that some personality types are better fits than others for some jobs within a hospital. While they all work in concert to achieve the best outcome of the patient, the person with a temperament to be an emergency medical technician might be a bad fit for a job as a surgical technician.
While program administrators work diligently with students to assist them once they are in the program, this expo could be a good chance to reach potential students early on. It is designed to give students and potential students a clearer picture from the start.
The counseling department is promoting this event for first semester students and students who are taking general biology, and anatomy and physiology, because those are the students most likely to seek a career in the health sciences. However, Love-White said the expo can be beneficial to anyone considering a career in the health sciences.
For more information, contact Love-White at plove-white@collin.edu or Yajaira Diaz at ydiaz@collin.edu .