brturner

I will look in to that today. My bachelor's is in Computer Science. My hope is that I can get some courses done online like a kaplan university type thing and get credits toward a medical degree. Not sure if it would be nursing or what but I would expect to work on it for the next 3 or four years and when the kids are in school, I would take the plunge and and get that first job in the medical field. I would like to possibly be an anesthesiologist in 10 years. That seems like a reasonable timeline (I think) I dunno, none of this may ever come to fruition, but I do feel the need to be more important than a guy sitting in a cube all day writing code.

I have been a software engineer for 10 years. I work for a medical staffing company (AMN Healthcare) you might have heard of some of our child companies (RN Demand, StaffCare, Med Travlers). I am 32, and I've come to the realization that I don't enjoy what I do. I am good at it but I don't like it. I think it is sad that we have to decide our careers at age 22 (when I graduated college) Saturday, I had my second child; a baby girl. while going through the process, I found myself in awe of the importance of the work these people were doing and have a strong need to do something more important that writing computer code all day in a cubicle. Here is my dilemma and where I need some help. I currently make good but not great money (right around 100k / year.) That is the root of the dilemma. I have two babies (2 day old and 2 yr old) and my wife makes about half of what I make working evenings as a therapist for abused / foster children. I want to do something important. I like the idea of something medical like nurse, physician assistant, etc. I can't drop everything and go to medical school and 8 years of training. How can I ease into something where I can maybe take some evening courses, or online courses, and get into a field where the pay has some potential to get to 80k or more within the first couple years. My biggest concern is that choosing a different career path means that I will have to stop working and go into a program where I am not making any money until I am certified. I can't afford to not be bringing in money. I also can't afford to drop down to a 30k job. Can anyone give me tips on changing into a more important career without having to stop and start from scratch. I need to provide for my family, but I need to do something more important. Are there careers that just take a couple years for a cert, and I can quickly get to a salary that will not make my family scrape by? Thanks for any advice. When I think about those doctors and nurses doing important work for my babies, I never want to write another line of code.