As one in eight Americans now works in the healthcare field, it’s now the greatest employer of people in the U.S. With an increased need for people to get involved, there are more entry level healthcare jobs than ever before. Whether you’re working at a pharmacy to assisting in an office, you could be getting your feet wet in healthcare without having to spend money on school.

Here are four healthcare jobs where you could learn a lot before you make any big career shifts.

1. Work As a Medical Secretary

If you’re interested in the medical industry but can’t find your way in, you might want to find a job that every office needs to have filled. One thing every office needs is a series of administrative assistants, secretaries, and staffers who help keep the office running. While you won’t administer care, you’ll be essential to making sure that everyone in your office has the tools they need to take care of business.

You’ll order supplies, keep the schedule together, and even coordinate between specialists, doctors, and hospitals. The biggest bend in the learning curve is going to be related to all of the terminologies you’ll have to learn. While you won’t make nearly as much as someone with a medical degree, you’ll get an education while you work.

Most secretaries at the offices of specialists make more than $15 an hour and some make even twice that. When you’re tasked with lots of organizational work as well as maintaining privacy for patients, you are worth more than the average admin. As you’ll need to learn and maintain HIPAA best practices, you’ll be trained to climb up the ladder quickly.

2. Nursing Assistants Get Experience

If you’re looking for a way to get into nursing or patient care eventually, you might not know the path you want to pursue. It takes years for the average medical professional to find their groove, often while they’re paying tens of thousands of dollars a year for school. Rather than go to school aimlessly trying to figure out what you want to do, work as a nursing assistant to find out what you like.

You’ll get hundreds of hours of hands-on experience working alongside trained staff and professionals in the field. You can ask questions and learn all about what each specialist is tasked with. If you work with RNs, you can find out about what it takes to become an RN and how they become qualified.

Picking up these hours in the field will prepare you for being in residence later in your career. In the meantime, you’ll earn a fair salary above minimum wage and depending on how serious the tasks you work on are.

3. Get Experience in Home Care

As we reach a near-crisis level of need for the care of our aging baby boomers, the number of home care aides that we need will rise. You’ll find that there are more and more people who are aging with dignity at home who also need help managing basic household tasks. Rather than struggle with their day-to-day functions, home care aides provide a much-needed service.

Home care aides are there to step in for those hours when our loved ones need help running errands, cooking food, or just need some company. They provide physical, emotional, and psychological support to our loved ones while we’re at work and dealing with our own families.

While this costs families anywhere from $25k to $40k a year, it provides untold enrichment for our loved ones. The people who take these jobs must have patience and an overall drive to help others. When we hand the care of our vulnerable loved ones over to a stranger, we put a lot of trust in them.

Most home care aides take this role very seriously and show a great deal of compassion for the people we care about.

4. Get Experience as a Physician’s Assistant

A physician’s assistant is the perfect person to know all about the inner workings of what’s going on in any medical office. They’re vital for ensuring that any doctor of any specialty has all the help they need in assisting the people who come into the office.

Over time, a physician’s assistant can go from working on bookkeeping and scheduling to doing things to help with minor medical duties. The tasks and procedures they’ll be allowed to complete are limited by the law and the doctor’s medical license, but you might be surprised at your tasks. You could be learning a lot on the job while also getting paid a fair salary.

You’ll have a great opportunity to see how many important day-to-day procedures are completed. Working for a family doctor or a private practice can make you part of the larger community. You’ll get acquainted with the people who come to the office in a substantial way and over time be trusted with more and more tasks.

If you decide to do your residency there, you’ll already have laid the important groundwork of trust, vital to the success of any medical professional. If you’d prefer something more laid back, you might find that you’d prefer to work in something closer to what you’d find in this guide.

Entry Level Healthcare Jobs Are Easy To Find

Even though the field is competitive, entry level healthcare jobs are important to ensuring that people get the care they deserve. Everyone from the intake nurse down to the brain surgeon is vital to making sure the ecosystem of healthcare continues to function.

If you’re thinking of getting into the eyecare industry, check out our guide for tips.