The Healthcare Revolution has begun. Where do you fit in, and how do you get in?

Healthcare presents a new set of challenges every day, and demands highly skilled, adaptable professionals.

Jobs are plentiful today – with the impending Baby Boomer exodus and a surging population, healthcare consumed 15% of the Gross National Product (GNP) in 2005. But beyond just scoring a job, you may soon find yourself compelled to update your skills for the new demands of modern healthcare: Breakthrough treatment methods, cost-control imperatives, patient-privacy regulations, and nursing shortages.

Without interrupting your busy work schedule, online education is an increasingly popular avenue to bolstering your skills, career, earnings and more importantly – your impact on a globalized health economy.

Two questions remain: Where do you belong, and how do you get in? Depending on your prior career history, you are likely to fall into one of three following healthcare career categories:

NURSING: Writing a concise description of a nurse's duties, or typical day on the job, is daunting. Whether you specialize in acute-care, apheresis, enterostomal therapy, or palliative Care, you fill the role of an "angel in comfortable shoes."

Such angels are lacking, however. According to the American Association of Colleges of Nursing, the U.S. shortage of registered nurses (RNs) will increase to 340,000 by the year 2020. Despite reports of staffing shortages, a projected 2.4 million nursing jobs make it the second largest occupational field projected for 2014.

About 13% of the RN workforce has a doctoral or Master's degrees (source: American Nursing Association). For the busy nursing professionals, many variations of an online nursing degree offer a convenient path to career advancement:

ALLIED HEALTH: Allied health professionals are often the unsung members of the healthcare profession – everyone knows about doctors and nurses, but how many know about these other important components of the multidisciplinary team? Pharmacists, laboratory technicians, counselors, speech-language pathologists, opticians, and more! An increasingly popular field of allied health is Medical Billing and Coding, and an Associate's degree in Medical Billing and Coding also can lead to opportunities in related fields, such as:

HEALTHCARE ADMINISTRATORS: The modern-day physician has a bevy of new tools, drugs, techniques at his or her disposal, while still adhering to a centuries-old Hippocratic Oath. But no physician's practice is immune to intense scrutiny, organizational politics, health insurance fraud, and a spate of medical liability suits. Healthcare administrators are thus indispensable for their keen awareness of business, management, and regulatory affairs, whether working in a hospital, clinic, agency, or medical practice.

Online degree programs in Healthcare Administration & Management have designed curriculum for the pressing urgencies of 21st century healthcare management. They have also aligned a flexible, customized, choice-oriented curriculum with the scheduling demands of a modern-day professional.

Whether you earn an online Associate's degree or a Master's, your skills can launch you into a wide range of managerial posts:

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