Mike Zimmerman was 53 years old when he finally got the opportunity to pursue a nagging lifelong ambition to work in health care. Four years later, he's working for the first time in a job he's excited to walk into every day. Bigger paychecks are a bonus.
Mike had been in sales, marketing, factory work, call center management and other jobs before getting a chance to serve as an aide in the radiology department at Valley View Regional Hospital in Ada. That provided the motivation and the opportunity to study radiation technology at Metro Tech in Oklahoma City.
"It changed my life entirely," he says. "Health care is what I was meant to do, and now I have that opportunity."
As an x-ray technician, Mike prepares patients and takes x-rays that help doctors diagnose and treat those patients.
"Most patients would rather be somewhere else," he says. "As a health care worker, you need to understand that anxiety and fear and help them through it." If you're considering a health care career, try volunteering first to see if it's something you really want, Mike suggests.
As for his own career, Mike thinks he might add three-dimensional CT and MRI imaging at some point, but for now, with the conversion from film to digital imaging, constantly evolving technology and a stream of ailing patients, he's finding plenty of opportunity right where he is.