15 July 2009

You probably know by now that America is facing a serious shortage of health workers. One big reason: Health training programs don’t have enough teachers to train the next generation of doctors, dentists, nurses and allied health workers.

The next time you’re sitting in class, imagine yourself at the front of the room.

It could be a rewarding place to find yourself someday.

When you think of a health career, you may not think about teaching. But most faculty members in medical schools, dental schools and other health training programs began their careers as health care practitioners.

If you enjoy bringing out the best in other people, pursuing an academic health career is a great way to make a lasting difference.

Here are three reasons you should think about an academic health career.

“A” is for adding faculty diversity

Health training programs are especially eager to hire instructors who are female or members of racial and ethic minority groups.

Experts have long believed that increasing diversity among health care workers will improve health care outcomes for all patients. Increasing faculty diversity is one way to draw more underrepresented minorities and women into the health care workforce.

Teachers don’t have to share the same background as their students, of course. But, as Johns Hopkins Medical School states on its website, increasing faculty diversity helps:

• prevent disconnects between providers and patients
• bridge health disparities
• build cultural competence
• foster inclusion
• reflect the diversity of the community

Underrepresented minorities and women who want to pursue academic health careers will find more doors opening to them in the years ahead. The pressure is building within health training programs to hire more minority and female faculty members.

A widely publicized survey conducted at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine exposed the urgent need for more diversity-sensitive hiring practices.

The journal of the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) recommended more family-friendly work policies to attract and retain female faculty. The American Medical Women’s Association reports that just 11% of all full professors in medical schools are female.

AAMC says the number of medical students who plan to teach someday has fallen from 15% to just over 9%. One possible reason: Academic careers don’t pay as much as practicing medicine, and most medical students graduate with over $100,000 in educational debt.

To level the playing field, the Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine of Case Western Reserve University is offering students full scholarships as an incentive to consider academic medicine. Other institutions are likely to follow.

“B” is for big impact

When you become a dental assistant or a nurse, you have a direct impact on all the patients you serve.

When you become an allied dental instructor or a nurse educator, your impact extends to all the patients of all the students who benefit from your instruction.

You can even do both. Many health professions educators continue to work as health care practitioners, dividing their time between classroom instruction and patient care. If you’re enrolled in a health professions training program now, talk to your instructors. Ask them why they choose to teach, and how they prepared for this career.

They’ll probably tell you that flexibility and the opportunity to work with both patients and students is a key benefit of academic health careers.

“C” is for contributing your knowledge and skills

Remember the old saying, “Those who can, do. Those who can’t, teach”?

That’s definitely not true for instructors in the health professions. Most health training faculty members have many years of clinical experience before they step foot in a classroom.

So, say you want to be an optometrist or a surgical technician or a phlebotomist. Complete your training, get a job in the field and perfect your skills. Then, when you feel ready for a new challenge, you can go back to school – as a teacher of future optometrists, phlebotomists or surgical technicians.

Another plus – in most cases, you don’t need any formal “teacher training” to become a health professions educator. Most health training schools are looking to hire instructors with clinical expertise rather than teaching experience.

So, the next time you’re sitting in class, imagine yourself at the front of the room. It could be a rewarding place to find yourself someday.