Electronic Health Reporter

Education is at the core of every successful profession. It provides you with the tools, knowledge, and experience that positively influence the outcomes of your work. However, some industries heavily rely on pedagogy more than others, out of which healthcare dominates them all.

The healthcare sector plays a vital role in patient care, impacting community wellness. It ensures that patients are healthy, protected by robust policies, and skilled professionals work with the community. The healthcare industry has many tasks to accomplish in a day. Therefore, the field has to hire highly qualified medical workers willing to commit to lifelong learning. Here’s how educated medical experts keep the sector flourishing:

• Better Care Provided By Nurses

Nurses are necessary to ensure patients get the help they need. They need to record patient data, relay the information to doctors and take care of the patients undergoing treatment. As a nurse, you can start your career with an Associate Degree in Nursing (ADN). Still, this qualification alone cannot prepare you to independently care for patients and ensure their safety. An ADN degree is only a stepping stone into the healthcare sector. If you want to become a registered nurse, you will need to polish specific skills, knowledge, and expertise.

Going from ADN to BSN online will save you time and fill in the gaps in your knowledge and skills. You will have the confidence to communicate more openly and professionally with a diverse group of patients. A BSN degree will also help you work on complex cases without hesitation. Such as establishing a standard EHR language, interpreting lab results, and resuscitating crashing patients. This will make patients more comfortable around you, trust your judgment, and make you a better patient advocate.

• Enhanced Maternal Health and Reduced Birth Injuries

In 2019 the infant mortality rate in the United States was six deaths per thousand live births. These complications resulted from birth injuries, preterm birth, and complicated pregnancies. When a mother’s health is at risk, it also endangers the baby, which can only get remedied by better education.

As an obstetrician, you will be able to enhance your knowledge through reading health reports published by the WHO and working in impoverished rural communities. You can then spread this knowledge and educate new mothers about their health and their babies’ well-being. You should encourage them to come in for regular appointments during pregnancy, which subsides the risk of a miscarriage. While the mother is in labor, you should advise them on suitable birthing methods such as squatting and not lying on the back.

• Positive Public Health Outcomes

Public health is all about community wellness. Common issues like infectious diseases, vaccination skepticism, and poor nutrition affect the well-being of a prosperous population. As a public health official, your education is vital in taking care of the people. By brushing up on biostatistics for public health, basic principles of epidemiology, and public health policy and management, you will help the community take care of themselves better.

Through your education, you will help the community avoid contracting diseases like HIV, tuberculosis, and in recent times the COVID virus. This includes encouraging the usage of contraceptives, explaining how vaccines work, and the importance of completing an antibacterial course.

• Eradicates Healthcare Bias

The healthcare industry can harbor different biases, making providing equal care impossible. Healthcare biases are stereotypes and discriminatory notions which can jeopardize a patient’s health due to lack of proper care. These include misconceptions on weight, religion, ethnicities, gender, and sexual orientation. For example, a 2019 study found that more than 30% of Black American people have numerous chronic health conditions in their fifties. Despite this research, white American doctors regularly dismiss their concerns. These doctors mistrust their patients and their symptoms, which delays treatment.

When you start reading about diverse cultures, working with different healthcare practitioners, and treating patients from different backgrounds, it will help to reduce your prejudices. You should also look into courses like implicit bias training in nursing to facilitate your knowledge Instead of letting unfair biases cloud your judgment. Your educated stance will make you more forthcoming, accepting, and understanding of what influences healthcare.

• Introduces More Technological advancements

AI, Machine learning, and Big Data are all trending topics that you can incorporate into the healthcare sector when you know how to. You should get a certificate in health informatics and information management to keep up with technology. Big data will help you as a hospital administrator to use complex software to book patient appointments, schedule them for tests and send patients notifications for an appointment.

Education will also provide you with valuable insight into designing patient portals. Upskill your master’s degree in healthcare administration with web designing to combine technology and health. When you know how to create comprehensive websites, you will create a proper design for your hospital’s patient portal. Your knowledge will inform you what patients want to see on a hospital’s page, such as hospital procedures, videos on complex surgeries, and a website tutorial.

• Efficient Medical Billing

Medical billing is a crucial aspect of the healthcare sector. As a medical biller, you should advance your degree by becoming a certified professional biller or a certificate in risk adjustment coding. This will help you work more effectively as a biller, using automated channels to identify repeats, improper patient records, and correct medical codes.

You will also become better at communicating with patients, informing them about claims, and the process of applying. Over 80% of medical bills always contain errors when they get first filed. Your certification will give you a sharper eye in identifying them.

Education is the holy grail of a thriving healthcare sector. While basic requirements can get you a spot in the industry, your advanced education will make a difference in inpatient care. As a nurse, when you allow yourself to have a BSN, it will make you more informed about better patient care. As an Ob/GYN, reading research and participating in rural communities also cultivate your maternal health knowledge. Medical technology can also use your help to get a certificate in health informatics and information to design and work with complex software. As a medical biller, go for upskilling through a certificate as a professional biller to avoid medical coding errors. These all work in unison to cultivate a better healthcare environment.