One of the most important steps of getting a proper education is deciding a career goal. My educational aspirations consist in obtaining a bachelor’s degree in communication and media in order to pursue my career goal of becoming a Patient Right Advocate. This decision is crucial for the whole process of becoming a professional. It can influence the choice of courses, activities and overall motivation of a student. I’ve always known that I wanted to devote my life to working with and communicating with various people, helping them. The decision wasn’t difficult to make for this is a worthy choice of profession and will certainly help me to use my skills along with my personal traits to their fullest potential. Besides, while helping other people a person helps himself/herself too by realizing self-importance and thus making him/her happier in general..
The decision to obtain a career as a Patient Right Advocate was not accidental. In my mind, pursing such a career will help me improve the medical care system of the state and the country, making the process of providing a patient with the proper treatment easier and more effective. I believe that, taking into consideration my communication skills, team-work skills, high sense of responsibility and the desire to help people, I can become successful, helpful and useful member of society of the Patient Right Advocate. The importance of the occupation I chose often get underestimated, but in fact the work that a Patient Right Advocate does is just as important as the work any hospital staff member does. Hospital patients are the most vulnerable of all people, their requests and their pleas can sometimes go ignored, this can often leave them at the mercy of the hospital staff; I would be their voice. Hospital patients can feel temporary physical helpless and be less emotionally stable than usual. This would suggest that they need professional guidance as to what rights they are entitled to as a human being, they may need help to solve problems that appear in the process of getting medical treatment. There has been hospital patients that need someone who will hear their complaints, take them into consideration and resolve them thus improving the medical treatment conditions. A Patient Right Advocate is a liaison that lies between the patient, his/her family, a hospital staff and medical care system in general. Unfortunately, patients often become deprived of their rights. “According to Article 25 of the Universal Declarations of Human Rights, everyone has the right to a standard of living, adequate health, including food, clothing, housing, medical care, and necessary services.”(Jiloha, 2010). This means that every person despite his/her age, gender, nationality, religious beliefs, occupation and health condition is entitled to the same rights of getting medical treatment. Besides, all the categories of people when admitted to a hospital should be treated equally. The concept of unimportant patients is nonexistent. The recovery of every patient should be every doctor’s primary goal.
Having made the decision, I’ve started further researching the profession to know what skills, abilities or experience I should acquire or perfect. Besides the degree in psychology, counseling, social work or a field related to the delivery of mental health services, one should have the experience of the aforementioned work and be medically educated. Moreover, one should have a number of organizational skills, professional and personal traits needed to put up with the pressure of working with people, a lot of information, multitasking and negative emotions.
Knowing the career goal and how to achieve is a process, the only thing left is working hard to go in the direction set by the goal. Evaluating myself as a future Patient Right Advocate I can say that though I already have a number of accomplishments, and competencies that may help me impress employers. I still need to improve some of my skills, and enrich my working experience to be a more competent employee. More importantly, I need to be a higher class professional in general. I know I need to acquire more knowledge specifically for this particular position. For example, the laws and regulations governing the communication between a patient and a medical institution.
Understanding the importance of acquiring the work experience related to my future occupation, I’ve been working in various medical institutions and hospitals as a nursing assistant first and then as a Patient Care Technician. The experience I have gained not only helped me acquire the much needed skill in communication with patients and the knowledge in the field of medical care, but has also helped me realize my weaknesses, skills and abilities that I need to perfect which would help understand the profession better. Moreover, working at a hospital gave me an opportunity to observe the work of their current Patient Right Advocate and even get some professional advice and guidance.
With the time before I graduate, I plan to work on acquiring the knowledge associated with the laws and regulations that govern the whole process of the functioning of a hospital. Also, I plan on working to improve my communication skills, the ability to resolve conflicts, complaints, solve problems. I believe that with some additional training I can become a good professional in the field I’ve chosen and achieve success my professional future.
References
Jiloha, R. (2010). Deprivation, discrimination, human rights violation, and mental health of the deprived. Indian Journal of Psychiatry Indian J Psychiatry, 52(3), 207-212. doi:10.4103/0019-5545.70972
