Written by Georgina Sampson, RHIA, HIT Program Coordinator, Brooklyn Park
When I was in high school I knew I wanted to go on to college, and I also knew that I wanted to work in a hospital setting. At the age of nine I had had surgery in a US military hospital in Landstuhl, Germany and from that time I knew I wanted to work in a hospital – nothing else would do. The problem I ran into was that I didn’t want to touch patients. So I had to find a job that would allow me to work in a hospital, but not expose me to patient body parts. A lot of hospital departments were quickly ruled out of my future because they involved direct exposure to patients and /or parts of their bodies. At some point in time I thought the only thing left for me was a future in housekeeping! And then I met someone who was retired from the field of “medical records” (the old fashioned term for health information management). Suddenly, my future looked bright because I knew what I wanted, and was able to get there.
That chance meeting with the woman who was retired from medical records was my first instance of networking within my chosen career. I haven’t stopped networking since. Students in our Intro classes are expected to go on field trips to learn about Health Information Management Departments, which is just another example of people networking within their chosen field. But as students you begin your networking long before that field trip, you begin on day one with your fellow classmates. Amazingly the acquaintances and friends you make now, as students, will follow you and grow throughout your career. Today I am still in touch with my classmates from college, as well as with the people I’ve worked with since graduating. Now I have a whole new group of people with whom I’m networking – my students! A number of my former graduates work with students at their facilities; some have even come back and taught a class or two; I get the occasional phone call about a job opening and also the call about someone looking for a job. Guess what? I know people to send to them and also people to send them to. It doesn’t matter how long (or short the time has been) that you’ve been in the health care field, because once you’re in, we’re all networking.
The wonderful thing about the present is all the technology that is available to people in the Health Information Field. Not only are we moving the patient record from paper to an electronic version but our journals, magazines, and information about the American Health Information Management Association are available in electronic formats! Check out these websites and start networking!
www.ahima.org
http://health-information.advanceweb.com/
Explore and find sites on Facebook, too! Be sure to share with the rest of us who are now in your professional network!