Healthcare Career Articles
Assessment Tools Can Help You Choose Your Nursing Career
Gurnick Academy of Medical Arts currently offers the following programs to train for a career in the medical field: Vocational Nursing (LVN or LPN), Psychiatric Technician (PT), Ultrasound Technology, MRI Technology, and Radiologic (X-Ray) Technology. But before you choose a healthcare field, you might want to look into taking some personality tests that can help you find out which medical career suits you the best.
The most widely used personality test is the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), an assessment questionnaire that measures psychological preferences about how we perceives our world and make decisions. One of the MBTI assessment reports is called the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator Career Report (www.skillsone.com), which helps to identify job families and occupations that will make a good match to different personality types. The MBTI was developed by Isabel Briggs Myers and Katharine Briggs and is based on Carl Jung’s theory of personality types. These traits include extraversion (E), sensing (S), thinking (T), judgment (J), introversion (I), intuition (N), feeling (F), and perception (P).
The Career Key Test is also based on John Holland’s theory of career choice and categorizes traits into the following six personality types: Realistic, Investigative, Artistic, Social, Enterprising, and Conventional. Not only does Holland believe that there are six personality types, and that these personality types perform best when they work in environments with people that have the same personality type. According to the Career Key website (www.careerkey.org), physicians and medical technologists are considered by Holland to be the Investigative type, who value working with people who are precise, scientific, and intellectual. Their strengths include understanding and solving both science and math problems. Nurses are categorized as the Social type, who value people and are helpful, friendly, and trustworthy. This group is best at skills that are common to what the student nurse learns in an LVN/LPN program, which include nursing and teaching patient education.
Another popular test is the Strong Interest Inventory (SII), which is used both for career assessment and educational guidance. The test was first developed in 1927 by psychologist E.K. Strong, Jr. and revised later by Jo-Ida Hansen and David Campbell. The modern version is based on the Holland Codes of psychologist John L. Holland. This test assesses your interests rather than your personality.
Not only can these and other assessment tests be beneficial in guiding you to your career, but they also offer information about your learning style. This all helps to foster your success as a student. However, a note of caution: when using personality tests, be careful to make sure that you do not allow test results alone to steer you away from your own “calling,” what you naturally feel would be most fulfilling to you as a career.