Her Story
About Amy
My very first healthcare job was scanning medical records for coding, then I became a medical records analyst. After that, I was a health unit coordinator for a medical surgical ICU. Then I worked as a referral coordinator for internal medicine clinics, a very busy internal medicine clinic. I also worked for another university-based hospital system, UT Southwestern, as a financial counselor for wound care. After that, I took a break and did marketing for a real estate development company for a couple years. Then I came back to healthcare for the past year and seven months. I have a degree in healthcare administration, and I'm currently getting my master's in health informatics. My basic background is in university-based hospitals, and that's a different way of thinking, different animal, different everything. I've worked in for-profit settings, but my expertise is really in academic healthcare. I'm not struggling in my master's program because I work for the university and I'm always thinking on the academic side, always thinking outside the box.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Amy
01What do you attribute your success to?
I attribute my success to being stubborn. Everyone in my family compares me and my sister - she's a VP of a hospital - and I go, I really am not even in her arena. I basically have a simple job. I don't make the high-figure job that she does, or have the most info. I have a very simple job. I schedule complex support, I schedule for 45 different subspecialties, work for a university, so I don't do much. I mean, compared to what most of my other family members do, my cousins do - my cousin's a nurse practitioner, well, actually, I have two cousins who are nurse practitioners, I mean, they're all in healthcare - they all have higher positions than I do. But I think I have the most unique job where not a lot of people can do what I do, if that makes sense.
02What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
I would say healthcare is an excellent, excellent forte. But I will say I work on the university side. I work in academic healthcare. So that's a whole different animal. For someone brand new, if you're able to get into healthcare, start from the ground up. And that way, you get the basic foundation to go where you need to. Because a lot of people are like, well, I have this fancy degree, so I want to have a managerial position. Well, that's fabulous, but if you don't have the basic knowledge, you're gonna struggle. I know a friend of mine who only worried about the paycheck. She was a pharmacist and decided to go work for a university-based health system, but she only worked PRN before. I told her, I said, you're not ready for it. I said, you don't have the basics in the university-based system for you to go. She struggled so much. She eventually left her position because she didn't have the basics down. She went for the big paycheck, and yeah, someone can offer you the big paycheck, but make sure you have the basic foundation that you need to go into that big job. And that's what a lot of people do, they go after that big paycheck and they don't have the basic foundation that's necessary for you to have that job. And then they struggle. You're sitting there, like, oh my gosh, I'm going to sink. It's like you're gonna sink or swim, kind of thing.
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