 What's happening guys? It's Shane here again, and this is another very highly requested video It's finally here the top 10 healthcare degrees now I've been seeing your comments about some of my videos being out of focus and up to this point I've been on an extremely low budget setup a lot of my videos I record either one my screen or just using the webcam and then I also had a really crappy camera with a cheap setup And I've been trying to make do with that But no matter what I tried it seemed with the camera I tried different lenses and all kinds of different things It always seemed to have that autofocus issue So I finally gave up and I decided to go out and buy a new camera that has really good autofocus So that's what you're watching me on right now. Let me know how it looks Smash like if you think it looks good because I honestly suck with cameras And I put a ton of work into trying to make these videos look better for you guys So anyways back to the list healthcare jobs are known for being extremely stable jobs And some of them are better than others and that's kind of what I'm going to go over here And as someone that is in the medical profession. I'm a pharmacist I think I have a lot of insight about which degrees are best I basically spent six years taking the same classes as nurses doctors PA's nurse practitioners and all kinds of other different healthcare professionals and I'm also extremely passionate about healthcare degrees I think they have a lot going for them They have a lot of upside and I think the best thing about a healthcare degree is you are able to help people on a daily basis So in this video, I'll be breaking that down and I'll also be sharing why I think some degrees are better than others But as always keep in mind This is just my opinion based on my own experience and my research that I do for these videos So please make sure to do your own research. Don't just believe and a stranger on the internet Make sure to look these things up yourself So number 10 on the list is going to be dentists and I think this is one that everyone's relatively familiar with So one thing about being a dentist is you often have to go extremely deep into debt Sometimes you're actually taking out more debt than if you were a medical doctor In fact, the average debt for graduating dentists is estimated to be around $285,000 that's really high and the problem is even though you go into more debt than a medical doctor You don't make nearly as much as they do for this reason many dentists will actually have a negative net worth Meaning they have a net worth less than zero Sometimes into their 30s and 40s and sure after you dig yourself out of that hole You're gonna be making an amazing salary everything is gonna be great But that is a lot of risk and a lot of time before you actually start making decent money And I personally shy away from degrees like this because I personally just don't want to be that deep in debt during the best years Of my life I want to be able to actually enjoy these years even though dentists probably make quite a bit of money in the long run To me having more money and freedom during the best years of my life is just worth it And I'm not a big fan of taking long-term risk where you go all in on one thing that will probably pay off in a few decades But you never know for sure like what if you decide that you hate being a dentist and you're already like 10 years of schooling in You know $300,000 in debt and you just decide you don't want to do it anymore That's you don't really have that option. The lack of freedom and flexibility here is a little concerning for me personally I know some people have no problem with that, but it's a red flag for me But that's just my opinion if you have the risk tolerance to do that then kudos to you That's gangster overall This is one where you want to shadow dentist just to make sure you are aware of what the day-to-day job They do is and you don't want to go into this one for the money You need to make sure this is something that you can do on a day-to-day basis for 30 to 40 years Dentists do tend to be a little bit more entrepreneurial than doctors and a lot of them end up starting their own practices So if you're okay with thinking long-term and playing the waiting game This one can pay off really well in the end number nine on the list is going to be another really well-known one Which is optometrist now optometrist is a doctoral level degree just like the previous one But you generally don't need as much on-the-job training or residency like some of the other doctoral level degrees They make really good money at about a hundred and eleven thousand a year and they're growing at about 10% This is another one. That's a really solid option overall But you do take on quite a bit of debt probably not as much as doctors or dentists But it's still pretty significant So I'd say this is another one where you want to make sure you know what you're getting into Shadow people to see what their life is like on a day-to-day basis and if it's right for you It can be a very good option number eight on the list is going to be medical doctor And I think this one is going to be a little controversial because people think it should be higher on the list And I basically made an entire video about this explaining why I think this is and overall the stats are pretty good for doctors They make over two hundred thousand dollars a year and they're growing at about seven percent The seven percent is pretty low when you compare it to a lot of the other health degrees on the list I think this is one of those professions That's extremely popular because you see it on TV all the time and for that reason people go into it for the wrong reasons The stress levels and responsibility are through the roof and this is definitely one of the most demanding careers out there There's pretty much never a time where your work is done your responsibilities are endless on top of that It's very similar to dentists in that you probably won't be making a good living until your 30s or 40s This is because you have to do eight years of schooling and then a residency That's usually three to seven years and then some people even go back and do a fellowship Then you have to spend years and years paying off the insane amount of debts that you get yourself into So for whatever reason you decide it's not for you You're kind of stuck and there's nothing you can do about it I remember hearing a story about a surgeon that went through a five-year surgical residency and then right after their Residency was over. They started having seizures. This means that they couldn't be a surgeon anymore Which means five years of surgical residency went down the drain So they'd likely have to switch to a different specialty and maybe even do another residency And like I said before going into a career like this where you put all your eggs into one basket Is just a little bit scary for me and for the right kind of person This can be an incredible career where you can make a huge impact on the world And I have huge respect for people who become medical doctors But I think for the average person this one is a little bit overrated Number seven on the list is going to be occupational therapists And I think a lot of people aren't a hundred percent sure what they do and in simple terms occupational therapists basically help people who have injuries Illnesses or disabilities do day-to-day activities This one is generally a six-year master's level degree and it doesn't usually require a residency You make around 84,000 a year and there's a very good growth rate of about 18 percent Now the salary is honestly a bit low compared to a lot of the other six-year degrees on the list But it's still pretty good Now from what I've heard occupational therapy is an extremely rewarding career where you get to help people and see them progress And honestly a lot of medical careers aren't like this because you might help people but you don't always get to see the fruits of your labors So as a pharmacist for instance a person might come to me with a problem and I give them a recommendation But a lot of the time I don't get to see whether it worked out for them This is also a really flexible career where there's a lot of options for you so you're not stuck in one area forever Now occupational therapists get confused with the next one on the list all the time which is physical therapists And to be fair there is a lot of overlap in what they do Physical therapists generally help people improve movement and manage pain So to sum it up a PT might ask you what can your arm do Whereas an OT might ask you what do you want to do with your arm There's more to it than that of course but I think you get the point Overall physical therapy has slightly better stats than occupational They make 87,000 a year and the job outlook is around 22% Both of these are excellent options though so if you're interested in them make sure to contact someone who's doing it and just shadow them Number five on the list is going to be dental hygienist And this is an excellent one because it's an associates level degree which only takes a few years to get into For that short amount of time you make a respectable 74,000 a year and there's an 11% growth rate Now just from personal experience I happen to think the 75,000 a year is a little bit low Mini dental hygienists actually work part time by choice and so that's the reason they make only 75,000 But I personally know one that works a little bit more and she makes over a hundred And that's just with working 40 hours a week if she wanted to she could work a lot more than that And I know this is just my opinion but BLS does agree with me They note here that mini dental hygienists do work part time Now I'm not going to sugarcoat it here you are putting your hands in somebody's mouth And people that do well as dental hygienists tend to be extroverts that are really good at small talk You should also be really good at multitasking and of course you have to be okay with Putting your hands in someone's mouth Now although BLS does say there's very good job outlook A lot of people that I talk to are telling me that schools are pumping out a lot of students And if that's not regulated it will probably end up getting saturated relatively soon So that's just something to keep in mind I think one of the weaknesses with this one is that people go into it Without really knowing what they're getting into And this one isn't nearly as flexible as a lot of the other healthcare careers Where you can easily just switch to doing something else Overall this is still really good for an associates level degree though Now number four on the list is nursing and this is one of the most flexible degrees Now there are so many different ways to become a nurse And it depends on a bunch of different factors You know there's accelerated programs Some areas don't require you to actually get a four-year bachelor degree There's a lot of different factors to it But overall it's generally going to take you three to four years to become a registered nurse Overall registered nurses make about $71,000 a year on average And that's with a whopping three million jobs and a 12% growth rate This is one of the most important jobs out there in my opinion Nurses are the backbone of the healthcare system This is also an extremely flexible job As there's so many different specialty areas that you can work in You're not stuck in one area So if you decide you don't like working in critical care You can easily transition into pediatrics or something else If you want to move up in the hospital or you're really ambitious and you want to make more money There's going to be a lot of opportunities there as well One option is going back to school to get a six-year nurse practitioner degree There are a lot of nurses that actually end up in leadership positions in hospitals Because you could make a good argument That no one knows the inner workings of a hospital better than a nurse Still nurses do get worked really hard And a lot of the time they're not treated very well You know I spent a lot of time in hospitals And the poor nurses do like all the work And then they also get blamed for everything So depending on your specialty you do have to have pretty thick skin But overall this is still a very good one Number three on the list is going to be radiation therapists Now radiation therapists generally treat cancer and other diseases By administering radiation treatment to patients And as you can imagine that can be extremely tough So you have to have a certain personality to go into this one This is another one that's a two-year associates level degree according to BLS And after those two years you can make around 82,000 a year And it has a 9% growth rate Radiation therapy has amazing stats for something that only takes two years to get into Now the low number of jobs to me is a little bit concerning And that's why it didn't make it higher on the list And overall it's a job that requires you to be extremely mentally tough And you really should shadow in order to figure out what it's really like But if you can handle this one it can be an amazing option for you Number two on the list is going to be nurse practitioner All right getting down to my top two favorites and both of these are fantastic Now really I rank these one and two but they're pretty much tied honestly Now nurse practitioner is generally a six-year master's level degree But a lot of the time nurse practitioners transition from being a registered nurse So there's probably going to be a little bit more schooling than that And you can do many of the same things that doctors do Such as diagnosing and prescribing Without some of the baggage that comes along with being a medical doctor The pay is amazing at about 113,000 a year There's 240,000 jobs out there with a ridiculous 26% job outlook On top of that this is an extremely flexible career Where you're not going to be stuck with whatever you choose You can do five years in family medicine You get bored with that Okay you switch to emergency for five years Okay you get bored with that Makes you a little crazy You switch to psychiatry for five years You can also choose to not work as many hours Or you can choose to work 80 hours a week like a medical doctor does And if you want to go for the money you can do that too Nurse anesthetists for instance make nearly as much for doctors And if they want to work a lot they can pretty much make as much as a doctor does I think you get the picture here This is not one of those careers where you put all your eggs in one basket and you get stuck You do have options here Number one on the list is going to be physician assistant But like I said before these two are basically tied PA is another six-year degree And you make around 108,000 a year On top of that there's 118,000 jobs with a ridiculous 31% growth rate This is actually one of the fastest growing professions in the United States And it has a lot of similarities with nurse practitioner Because you can prescribe and diagnose sort of like a doctor And I am going to do a video about the differences Between nurse practitioners and PAs at some point Because people have been wanting me to do that But without getting too deep into the details Nurse practitioners generally have a little bit more power than PAs Although their power tends to be concentrated in whatever specialty that they're in Nurse practitioners technically don't have to work under a doctor Whereas PAs do And PAs are basically like mini doctors more or less And it's even easier for PAs to switch specialties than it is for nurse practitioners In fact I've actually seen PAs work in multiple different specialties at once For this reason PAs is even more flexible than NP Becoming a PA also generally will take a little bit less time To get into for the average person Whereas from the research I did Nurse practitioners are generally recognized internationally Whereas PAs aren't yet This means that if you move to London You might be able to keep your job as a nurse practitioner Whereas if you were a PA you might not Overall both of these are fantastic options that tick all the boxes And they're flexible and they're just amazing Check my videos out right here I made them just for you Go ahead smash the like button Hit the subscribe button Ring the little notification bell And then comment down below Any comments, criticisms, ideas, etc That you have on the video Thank you so much for watching And bye for now