Practical Tips for Growing Your Healthcare Career in Australia
A healthcare career can become complicated. Once you’re a qualified practitioner, there are many things to take care of, including registrations to maintain and different workplaces to understand. Then you have to choose specialties to explore and, occasionally, deal with the uncomfortable realisation that the job you thought you’d love isn’t for you. That’s normal. Your career rarely follows one neat path.
Pay Attention To Which Jobs Keep Finding You
If you’ve worked in healthcare for a little while and are ready to expand a little, it’s best to look at the jobs people keep asking you to do. If everyone always asks you to train new staff or deal with certain patients, these are signs. They tell you a lot about your strengths.
If you’re thinking about your next move and don't know where to start, look at these clues. If you keep getting pulled towards certain responsibilities, you should explore career options that offer you the opportunity to utilise your strengths.
Ask Senior Staff What Their Jobs Involve
Titles can be misleading in healthcare. A senior clinical role might sound like a straightforward promotion. But this role, for example, often involves far more administration, staff coordination or decision-making than you might have expected.
If you aren’t sure yourself, talk to your colleagues. Ask about which part of the role they didn’t expect and what they wish they’d learnt earlier. A ten-minute conversation during a quiet moment can be enough to point you towards something worthwhile. But it can also prevent you from making a huge mistake.
Use Recruiters When You’re Unsure Where To Look
You don't have to find every opportunity by scrolling through job boards at midnight. If you’re qualified and ready to move, medical recruitment agencies can sometimes connect you with hospitals, clinics and other healthcare employers that match your experience. They take into account your preferred type of work. If you’re unfamiliar with a certain part of the Australian healthcare market, having someone do most of the job search for you can be handy.
Still, you should treat the recruiter as a resource rather than handing over control of your career. Be clear about the locations, hours, and role types. Firmly set the conditions you’re willing to consider. If you know you don't want a certain environment, it’s best to say so early.
Keep A Private Record Of Work You’ve Done Well
Healthcare workers tend to move from one task to another without keeping track of what they’ve accomplished. Then an application asks you to describe a difficult situation you handled. It’s not always easy to remember and find the best example.
Keep a simple private record to help you keep track of your achievements. Write down projects you contributed to and training you completed. If there are processes you helped improve or positive feedback you received, it should be noted down. Don't include confidential patient information. The goal is to build a useful bank of examples for future applications, performance discussions and interviews.
Try A Different Healthcare Setting Before Changing Careers
If you’re unhappy at work, it’s tempting to assume the entire profession is wrong for you. Sometimes it is. But sometimes you’ve landed in a workplace that doesn’t suit you. That’s common, too. A large public hospital, a private hospital, and a smaller practice can feel like completely different careers even when the underlying qualification is the same.
Before making a dramatic career decision, it’s best to pause. Try to see whether you can experience another setting. Casual work, temporary assignments, secondments and short-term opportunities can give you a much better idea of what suits you. You may find that you don't hate your profession at all. You just hate doing it in that building, with that group of people.
Stay Open To A Career That Looks Different At 35
You don't need to have your entire healthcare career mapped out in your twenties. You can, but best believe that your plans will likely change. People change specialties, move between clinical and non-clinical work and then return to study only to discover different interests after years in the same field. Your first qualification isn't a life sentence.
Instead, think about building a career that gives you useful options. Keep your skills current, maintain your professional relationships, pay attention to opportunities and notice which parts of your work you enjoy. You can make a sensible change when the evidence points you towards one, but you have to be open to it.
Conclusion
Growing your career isn’t easy. It comes with many ups and downs, and sometimes, each move plants a new seed of doubt. But that is normal. We are often resistant to change and growth, so it can feel uncomfortable. But as long as you think through your options and stay open to change, you will find that expanding and growing isn’t as scary and intimidating as it looks.
