Care + Career

The healthcare industry is dynamic, complex, and constantly evolving to meet the needs of patients, families and communities served. When exploring careers within this exciting field, you will quickly realize there are MANY rewarding, interesting, and fulfilling paths to consider.

Long gone are the days where an interest in healthcare meant having to only choose between becoming a doctor or nurse. Quite the opposite! In an effort to pivot alongside an emerging consumerism-based environment, there has been a marked increase in professional, non-clinical roles that are essential to a care facility and/or organization’s long-term success.

As an allied health professional, your days are spent investing your expertise, energy, and compassion in the lives of the patients you serve through your clinical or administrative skills. Each interaction and task throughout your day is an opportunity to ensure that the patients you care for feel the commitment you have to your chosen career and to their experience.

Patient Care Technicians/Assistants (CPCT/A) are critical in helping provide the day-to-day care that some patients require. This job requires a broad range of knowledge and skills, and is a vital role in caring for patients — especially those with chronic conditions.

We are passionate about keeping our materials and certifications relevant and meaningful to help empower allied health professionals reach their career goals. Before we made the recent updates to NHA's Certified Patient Care Technician/Assistant (CPCT/A) exam, we spoke to employers and current patient care technicians, and would like to share some of the information and insights we discovered. Knowledge is power, and we hope this information will help you — whether you're currently working in healthcare or aspire to one day!

How does an arrangement where you have the opportunity to get paid while also learning career-advancing skills sound to you? Too good to be true? Well it’s not.

Medical Assistants Recognition Week (MAR Week) celebrated the third full week in October (Oct. 15-19, 2018), is a time to celebrate your hard work, dedication and compassionate care. Your ordinary is extraordinary, and we hope that as a healthcare professional you celebrate your achievements, as well as the achievements of your peers. Here are some ideas to help you lift up and celebrate your fellow MAs so that they can feel seen and appreciated.

We’re pleased to announce the recipient of the Spring 2018 NHA Career Bridge Scholarship, Julie Pham, CPhT.

It's natural to feel a little nervous about a job interview. Nerves, however, can hurt your performance in an interview if you don't prepare. So NHA turned to the experts for advice on overcoming interview set-backs.

From getting to know the company to following up after an interview here is a guide to interview success from experienced healthcare hiring managers on ways to stand out (the right way) before, during, and after the interview.

There's a growing demand for frontline healthcare workers. To date, NHA has awarded over 750,000 certifications to allied health professionals. Empowering professionals through the power of certification is at the heart of our mission, and we regularly conduct industry research to ensure the content and exams we provide to current and future certification holders are relevant and keep up with trends.

Recently, we looked at the current state of the EKG technician profession — and what's to come in the future. During this research, we surveyed and interviewed working EKG technicians across the country. Here's a what we learned from them.

You worked hard, earned your certification and started your new career in healthcare. Congrats! Your dedication speaks volumes about your character.

But there's still room to grow. (There's always room to grow.) And if you want to level-up your career, the best person to consult is yourself. Yes, YOU!

“There is only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving, and that's your own self.” - Aldous Huxley

Taking time to reflect on your work performance — especially in regards to "soft skills" — can help you identify areas for improvement and give you a solid foundation for achieving your professional goals.

So, where do you start?