Health Courses for the Tech Savvy Student

You're always on the computer, but unlike other people, it's not to chat with friends or to update your profile picture: it's to create applications or to learn more about the equipment itself. You've thought about going into information technology as a career, but wonder if there is anything else that you can do. You particularly like the idea of helping people. Knowing that you were using your innate skills to help others would infuse your life with extra meaning. Sound like you? Then you may want to consider technology-based healthcare training.

Someone like you who lives and breathes computers could, for instance, consider taking the following healthcare training: medical computing, ultrasound technician and radiation therapist.

Medical computing

Medical computing is a broad term that could refer to a wide range of health courses:

- medical data processing: e.g., making billing software so simple that it affords a team at a medical clinic more time to apply their skills learned in healthcare training to patient care, rather than leaving them to muddle through long and inefficient administrative tasks.

- medical software engineering: imagine creating software that makes the diagnostic imaging process even just a little bit more accurate so that graduates of ultrasound health courses can report back to patients and doctors with that much more confidence

- biomedical computing: in this health and technology field, practitioners learn how to apply the problem-solving, pattern-recognizing abilities of computers to improving human health

These are just some of the many health and technology opportunities computers present.

Ultrasound and computers

Students who enroll in health courses to learn how to become ultrasound technicians are asked to have certain social skills, as well as a high level of manual dexterity. But they should also be comfortable with the intersection of health and technology. They should be prepared to master new equipment over the course of their careers, and should be determined to get the most out of their existing technology.

Radiation therapist

Healthcare training in this sector prepares students for such jobs as X-ray technician or radiation technologist, operating the machines that dispense potentially life-saving radiation therapies to oncology patients. People who take these kinds of health courses must be as interested in machinery as they are in people. Health and technology are here two shared passions!

Health and technology have become inextricably linked. A doctor would have trouble correctly diagnosing and treating patients without the help of the graduates of healthcare training who know the ins-and-out of the equipment. We are dependent on ultrasound machines, computer programs, etc.! People with technology skills are needed in all industries, but especially in health care.

One way to find out more about health and technology careers is to phone up schools in your area to ask about career options. Good luck!

Accounting Courses in the Age of Personal Debt

The generation that is coming of age today has grown up in an era of easy credit. They may have watched parents place major purchases on their credit cards without having the cash in the bank to cover the cost. They may have been issued a credit card themselves as one of their first acts of adulthood. Some have said that this easy access to credit has led to an era of overspending, that the frugal ways of the past have been forgotten, that young people today do not know how to budget - a topic that is conspicuously absent from the curriculum in too many high schools. But what does this mean for students currently enrolled in accounting training?

It means that client education may be a factor of your practice after receiving your business accounting diploma. That you may need to explain the basics of financial planning to your clients, and that you should start preparing to do so while still in accounting training.

One of the best ways to practice explaining Financial Planning 101 to others of your generation is to take advantage of the student base at the school where you are taking accounting courses. You can host a talk on budgeting, or invite students to free one-on-one consultations, where you explain such basics as "always save a percentage of each pay cheque" and "don't spend more than you make."

Some business accounting diploma programs also encourage their students to do financial planning work in the community. If your school doesn't have such a program, consider setting one up. The more experience you have gently encouraging people to make wise decisions with their money, the better you will do as an accountant, whether serving individuals or organizations (groups, too, can struggle with such concepts as "managing cashflow.")

Another advantage of mastering this skill while still enrolled in accounting courses is that public outreach can actually help you get your name out there, and help you find clients or employment later. Your fellow students may one day seek out your professional services, and future employers may be impressed by the initiative you showed in your accounting training, and your commitment to sound financial principles.

After accounting training, you will be helping organizations and individuals track their spending, manage their spending and stay in the black. Some of your clients or employers may be under the impression that this task is difficult, but it may be your task to remind them that it is really quite simple.

Accounting courses must prepare students to navigate a reality where individual clients may be shouldering an unconscionable amount of consumer debt, or where organizations may be convinced that they need to borrow money to make money. But this is a proposition with some silver linings. The more the student prepares, the more they may stand to gain on the job market.