How do I pursue a career in healthcare administration?

Can I become one of these healthcare professionals?

• Ok so I have recently decided that I want to pursue a career in the healthcare. The problem is that for the majority of my college career I thought I wanted to be involved in government/politics somehow but have recently grown very disillusioned with the whole democratic process, etc. (too long of a story and beside the point). I graduated with a 3.65 gpa from a four year state university with a major in Political Science and a minor in Economics and Chinese language. I am doing Americorps for a year now but after that I would like to either pursue a career as an RN (accelerated BSN), Occupational Therapist, Speech language pathologist, or physical therapist. Do I have any chance of getting into any university's program for these with a major and minor that are pretty much completely unrelated? Will my fairly high GPA help? I would greatly appreciate a response from anyone who is or has been in a situation like mine or is in one of the career fields I have mentioned! Thanks!

• Answer:

  Sure. As a former cop we routinely hired officers with degrees other than Criminal Justice. As an EMT I see more people with degrees completely unrelated to health care. Do you have any healthcare experience at all? If not, my advice would be to go and get your EMT. While you may not want to ride an ambulance for your career an EMT provides a good foundation for further education. Also, it provides a foot in the door so to speak at a hospital if you choose to work as an ER Tech (EMT's who work in ER's) as opposed to an ambulance. Medical school is a lot of information. Having some sort of back ground such as EMT would help you understand what they are teaching you. Most EMT programs cost $700 - $1200 for the class. It is a lot cheaper to spend that then to spend the tens of thousands for a degree and then find out you don't like it. Regardless of what you choose to do your current degree wont stop you.