Medical Jobs You Don’t Need A Degree For

Medicine is a hard field to get into. Becoming a doctor often requires taking a degree lasting five to six years, not to mention the costs. Fortunately, there are quicker and cheaper routes into medical care. These routes may not enable you to become a physician, but you’ll still be involved in the healthcare of others. Here are a few examples of such careers.

Healthcare Assistant
To become a healthcare assistant you generally don’t need any qualifications, unless you’re working with children. Healthcare assistants look after elderly and disabled people that struggle to look after themselves. You can train on the job, although may benefit from having some experience being a carer for an elderly or sick person in the past. Patients need both physical and mental support, which can make it a tough job, but ultimately rewarding. Working evening and weekend shifts in some cases can earn you extra cash.

Professional Coder
For those that consider themselves overly organized – maybe even bordering on OCD – don’t worry because there’s an ideal job for you. Professional coders are in charge of medical and insurance billing and coding, ordering everything into an alphanumerical digital filing system. There are a number of medical billing and coding schools online that can teach you the ropes. Being a savvy with a computer may help, although you don’t need any prior knowledge of the medical coding language – this will all be taught during the course.

Prosthetic Technician
Prosthetic technicians are in charge of producing artificial limbs and body parts for patients, giving amputees and disabled persons with specialist conditions the chance to live a normal lifestyle. These prosthetic limbs are built with specialist equipment and need to be built to precise measurements, making this a job with no room for error, although the pay is usually decent enough to make up for this. Having five grade A–C GCSEs is usually recommended. A passion for engineering and tech may also be advantageous.

Maternity Support Worker
Working closely with midwifes, maternity support workers help new mothers and newborn babies to have as stress-free a birth as possible. Maternity support workers help welcome expectant mothers onto the wards as well as running basic health checks. You won’t need the thorough training of a midwife, although having some decent GCSEs behind you could be a benefit. This can be a very rewarding job – especially if you love babies.

Porter
Porters are in charge of transporting things between wards. This could involve complex equipment for operations, emergency medicine or frail patients that need help walking. This is a crucial role in the hospital, but requires no kind of prior experience. You learn on the job and by liaising with patients, nurses and doctors may learn all kinds of valuable skills. All you need is enthusiasm and a desire to be helpful and you could be ideal for the job.

Photo by Inga Marchuk | Shutterstock