Top Jobs For Introverted Healthcare Professionals

It can be exhausting, constantly having to have perfect customer service, be happy and outgoing, while racing around a clinic for years. As a PT myself, I 100% feel ya- and I’m only at year 9! In this article, we’ll give you several ideas that you can do if you want to just take a break from talking to people!

1.  Canine Therapy:

One idea is canine therapy. What is canine therapy? (you can also do equine or horse therapy as well). This is where you are helping to restore the health and mobility of animals. You often use ultrasound or laser therapy, pool therapy, and various obstacle or therapeutic exercise.

It is recommended to receive additional education in canine or equine therapy before pursing a job role or your own business in this. You’ll also need the oversight in some fashion of a veterinarian. 

In fact, right after graduating I spent some time in a paid internship at a Los Angeles canine therapy clinic – it was a blast!

A dog would come and we say hello, bring him/her over to a bed and do a little massage, a little stretching, some laser therapy and maybe a little pool swimming. Note that pool swimming is actually really hard and you get splashed a lot at!

I really loved it! It may not pay the best, for a full time role it would have been about $60,000 but each clinic is different so please search yourself.  And I would contact a clinic, or a veterinarian locally, to see if they would sponsor you taking the certifications so that they could offer your services.

2.  Utilization Review and Similar Roles:

While you still will be talking with people, this is one option to be less involved with people. A day in the life of someone in Utilization Review looks like this: You open up your computer dashboard, from the comfort of your home, and see the charts you need to read. You read your assigned clinical notes and look for medical appropriateness and necessity.

You may be able to write a report from what you have, or you may have to call the provider to ask more questions or request more information, or you may need to talk to the nurse or physician on your team to get their input.

This role usually is fully remote and pays $75,000 - $85,000 a year plus benefits, raises, and upward mobility.

 To learn more, you can go here and see our ultimate guide to utilization review: https://www.alternativehealthcarecareers.com/courses/becomeautilizationreviewer.

3. Medical Coding:

If you enjoy the computer and want minimal communication with other people, then you may also want to look into medical coding.

The pros of this role is that most of us already know a fair amount about medical coding, so this career isn’t a completely left field career. It’s also often fully remote and basically your day consists of reading medical notes and ensuring they are coded correctly for proper billing.

The pay however for this averages around $50,000 a year plus this is something you do a need a certification for. You’ll need to complete the CPC or Certified Professional Coder certification, a gold standard for physician based coding. It’s a complicated exam, often requiring 20 weeks of preparation. The cost for preparation, the exam and AAPC membership is roughly $2650.

4. Prosthetics and Orthotics:

Although not 100% independent of people interaction, this career route does allow you to still get the satisfaction of helping people but with reduced interaction. In this career, you are often inputting orders by therapists, measuring and fitting braces, or providing supplies to the patient or the clinic.

I think it uses our knowledge very well and so it should be a smooth transition and is still rewarding.

The down side of this career is that you do need to have a degree in either Orthotics or Prosthetics to perform those duties. Here are list of programs for these degrees https://ncope.org/index.php/home-page-v2/academic-programs/accredited-practitioner-programs/. It's roughly $30,000 to get these degrees and it's usually a 2 year masters degree. 

5. Informatics:

This is a great video training and example of a transition into healthcare informatics https://www.youtube.com/live/_5nWyEAFl2M?feature=share.  

Informatics can be a great transition and yes, therapists including speech, occupational or physical therapists as well as assistants can transition into this career route. 

What is informatics? According to une.edu: 

"What Health informatics, which is the intersection of people, technology, and data to improve the safety and quality of patient care, can be found in many forms. A few examples include patient portals, electronic medical records (EMRs), telehealth, healthcare apps, and a variety of data reporting tools."

It's one of the fastest growing careers according to fiu.edu and can pay very well. In our video above, she made at first around $85,000 and then moved into a second role after a few years experience that made $115,000! 

The pros of this role is that it pays well, it can be a remote role although it also can be an in person role, and it's relatively computer based and so although there is some interaction through your reports and recommendations, its very little on daily basis. 

The cons of this career route is that you often need at least a certificate to secure these roles but usually for high paying routes, you'll need to get a masters degree. If you are interested in learning more about these degrees, we did interview USF's informatics director here and he answers a lot of questions: https://www.youtube.com/live/io1VtArZKc8?feature=share. 

5. Research:

 This is really a broad topic, but this could be a great career route if you are more introverted. I'll share an example at my current work - we have a PTA that is heading up the data collection in conjunction with physical therapy treatments and physician evaluations for low back pain. Her duties include educating us on the student, gathering information to send out to our patients (they receive a survey for pre and post therapy), gathering our treatment notes and progress, and merging that data. I've seen her a few times for meetings but mostly her role is conducted via emails. 

One thing I want you to learn is that you could help with research of a equipment, of a diagnosis, of a population or a procedure to name a few ideas. 

These jobs can be often found with health institutes, schools (such as DPT, SLP or OT programs), or in hospitals or at the Veterans Affairs.  And also look at equipment providers too as they are often gathering research to help prove the benefit of their equipment!

In terms of pay, I think this can vary so greatly so I can't really give a number but be prepared for a possible pay cut. But some of these roles could be a combination of clinical work with research on the side and that may lead to less of a pay cut. (but hey, it could be better paying too, so search for yourself!)

 I think some pros of this work is that it is less or non physical, reduced interaction with people, you still get to help people and feel rewarded, and it may still be similar pay. Some con's could be that it may be a pay cut, you may need extra education, and this may be a more rare role so it could take some time to find these types of positions. 

 Summary:

I hope this list helps! Let us know if you have any more ideas of awesome jobs for introverted healthcare professionals!