Our careers encompass most of our timelines in life.  We all need a career and each job we hold builds on that overall career path.  At HIMSS, we don’t view a job as just a job but rather a part of a person’s career path.  A career path is your lifetime achievement of your professional accomplishments.  So, as you continue to move through the trials and tribulations of a career in healthcare IT, remember a few pearls of wisdom.  These come from our eMentors all senior level executives who through their careers have held many jobs building a brilliant healthcare IT career path.

One of the resonating career tips we hear often is for you to dream big and don’t get hung up on the pieces in a job that you cannot change.  No matter how hard we try despite the degrees, the certifications and our “know how” there are things that you simply might not be able to control.  So focus your energies on those things that you can control and avoid wasting excess career energy on something that has no long term relevance or positive outcome on your career path.  When or if you encounter something in your career that you can only react to, ensure that your actions are reflective of your skills and attributes. This is where having soft and transferable skills fine-tuned really help a career journey.  Ensure your reactions are intelligent to the action.

You also have only so much ability to maneuver in a position.  So it proves helpful when you surround yourself by people who push you forward, not hold you down or limit your ability to accomplish.  Another idea to ponder is to not assume your co-workers need to be your friends and confidantes.  They are after all, your co-workers, not your friends and those boundaries if kept make for a very non-dramatic work environment.  Often, we feel our co-workers need to be our friends too.  But in reality, you might just share one common thread, your work environment. Logic supports the notion to keep personal relationships in business at arm’s length.

Finally, never hesitate to interject your thoughts and dreams into your current role.  If you don’t share your thoughts and the planning efforts, then someone will simply provide you with their visions and tasks for you in your current role.  So take the lead and build the vision for your current role.

And lastly, always be a great listener (it can never be stated enough).  As the old saying goes: “We all have two eyes, two ears, and one mouth so use what we have the most of first."  Maybe this is Mother Nature’s way of telling us what we need to do first: listen, observe then react.  Being observant and a good listener goes a long way in the work environment.

For more career pearls of wisdom, please visit our eMentor website.

And remember...Be passionate about your career path and strive to make a difference and learn, learn…learn.  Technology is only the enabler; individuals will be the “transformers” of health IT in the years to come!