Dental offices may have a dentist's name on the door, but usually, it takes more than just the dentist to handle the tasks that keep the business afloat. Instead, various workers, such as dental assistants, handle tasks from the moment the patients walk through the door till the practice closes for the day and prepares for the next day.

Dental assistant work is in very high demand right now. The Bureau of Labor Statistics lists the field's growth rate at 11%, making it a high-demand career in Portland. Becoming a dental assistant is a rewarding and varied career, offering the chance to see the inner workings of a healthcare practice if you have a goal of continuing with your education to participate in some other aspect of the field.  If you speak to any dentist who's gone through a hiring shortage, they'll tell you exactly the value of dental assistants. Offices run on the labor of these workers!

So many important aspects of a doctor's visit begin to solidify when you first walk in the door. Think about the difference between being greeted politely and immediately connected to your provider versus not being noticed and then being haphazardly registered and checked in for your appointment. As a Patient Access Specialist, you get the opportunity to make people feel connected, cared for, and ready for their appointments, all while doing important behind-the-scenes data collection that helps you to continue serving them well during the payment or insurance process.

Maybe you're asking, "What is a patient access specialist, anyway?" Patient access specialists are the workers who first interact with a person coming into a medical clinic or doctor's practice. Their combination of greeting and entering information into the scheduling and documentation databases is one of the vital components of keeping the practice running smoothly. As a Patient Access Specialist, you need a combination of skills to find success in helping patients feel at ease.

Dentistry has advanced in remarkable ways over the centuries. In just the past few decades alone, safe and frequent radiological scan technology has allowed dentists and orthodontists to understand the human mouth better. The information revealed in these scans helps dentists find potential problems before they are noticeable on the surface of the teeth and before they become a medical crisis or significant source of pain.

Dental assistant work exists in various dentistry contexts, including regular dental practices, emergency dentistry, orthodontics, and oral surgery. While the work varies from one practice to another, there is a need to take x-rays or other imaging scans accurately and safely in most of these contexts.

However, with this additional technology comes additional training for dental assistants who want to be versatile team members in dentistry practice. Understanding this additional training and how it benefits you shows how radiology for oral surgeons' certification can help you advance your career and keep strong job security as you consider future moves within the field.

While the reception workers in any business can make customers feel comfortable and well-oriented, there are few contexts where they are as vital as in the medical world. Patient access specialists work as the first contact with patients visiting a doctor's office or other healthcare settings.

People often come to the doctor with stress or concerns, and the patient access specialist they encounter shapes their experience, calms them down and helps them feel cared for and supported. If you're looking for a role that impacts people and keeps you busy with new tasks every day, a patient access specialist is a fantastic role that can lead to other industry opportunities.

Programmers are a diverse bunch, ranging from individuals who taught themselves a single useful coding language because it was helpful as an additional skill to extensively-educated programmers who can seamlessly work in many different programming languages and contexts. In general, however, programmers who want more upward mobility and to stand out among other candidates can add new languages and platforms to their repertoire as a way to grow.

One of the most impressive places to increase your skills is learning app development for the Apple App Store. The coursework needed to learn iOS Mobile Design and Development is surprisingly quick to learn and has many different applications. In a world where everyone from insurance companies to restaurants is trying to get their app designed to command more attention and commitment from their customers, app design and development are a highly applicable set of skills. You learn it through a two-part non-credit course offered at Portland Community College. If you've never considered learning how to code for iOS or build apps for iPhone, consider these applications of this skillset.

More and more, people are turning their efforts to engage with the internet from laptop or desktop web browsers to app-based programs on smartphones and tablets. This shift has made what was already an essential app development field into an even more valuable area of focus. People are creating full-time positions and freelance roles with unprecedented flexibility simply by understanding how to design and code for Apple's iOS.

Whether you're an experienced coder in other contexts or new, a Portland Community College course in Apple iOS can help you jumpstart your career and enter new spaces of app development. Here's how to build iPhone apps using this knowledge!

Portland is a city of the future, and the significant career trends reflect in the marketplace. While the 2020s have many uncertainties about what industries will emerge as most successful, it is becoming increasingly clear that specific fields will be vital in employing hundreds or even thousands of people, compared to past decades.