Will stocking an IV cart everyday for 12 months make you grow as a person? Absolutely not. But working a job in an environment that gives a front-row seat to observe how the healthcare process really works WILL make you grow as a person.
Developing a true sense of humility and humbleness will make you grow as a person. Example: you're a tech, yet you have a bachelor's degree and outstanding grades and test scores. You're academic accomplishments and education are far surpass that of the general pubic. Yet the employee directly above you is a nurse, who in some cases may only have an associates degree. You have to help them get/deliver/set-up/clean whatever they say they need. And they get paid a lot more than you. That's humbling. Combine that with the fact that you look around and eventually realize that every single healthcare provider in any room you are in is more skilled, knowledgeable, valuable and essential than you are at the present moment. That's motivating.
How will that help you years later as an AA? Easy. You won't be a dick to the other people who are lower than you on the totem pole. Because you've been there and you know how it makes you feel like crap when someone talks down to you because your just a tech and because they can. Starting at the bottom makes you a better team player when you eventually move up.
Don't you think that would be a useful life lesson for someone who, say, never worked a day in their life during undergrad, was accepted straight into anesthesia school, and is now an AA making a six figure salary? Hell, just listen to the tone of some of these people on this message board. How do you think that person is likely to interact with their subordinates?
Being confronted with the hardships that certain segments of the population face will make you grow as a person. Example: I helped care for a pt who was severely hyperkalemic because she did not have $5 to pay for the bus ride back and forth from the dialysis center and missed her dialysis appointments for an entire week. I didn’t even know what dialysis was before I started working, let alone that for some people $5 is that hard to come by. Say what you want about the poor and politics, but that lady was suffering and seeing it sucked. I wouldn't wish that situation on anyone, regardless of what she did to end up there. Seeing situations like that, for months on end, changes the way you think about the world.
My rebuttal to your argument: At moments like that, it does not matter than your only responsibility is putting monitors on her when she comes in and collecting and sending her blood samples to the lab. If your eyes are open, you grow as a person.
It's close-minded views like yours that would benefit from working a healthcare job. I can tell you that my view of the world was night and day from when I left on my last shift compared to my first one. I wasn't expecting to, but I had significantly grown as a person.
I'm not advocating that every AA applicant has to work healthcare prior to school. I just can't agree with the general theme is that "doing less is better." Just because certain people don’t HAVE to get a healthcare job to be successful during a re-application cycle does NOT mean it ought to be celebrated and coveted by others. Moreover, it troubles me that multiple people on this board have talked about how they don't want to work as a tech, transporter, nurse's assistant because it is beneath them, because they are too good for that role. My argument still is that a lowly healthcare job DOES have a lot to offer that goes far beyond making yourself look better on paper.
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