Hospitals are desperate to fill a middle-class health care job that only requires candidates to graduate from a certificate program — the issue is nobody’s heard of it.
Sterile processing technicians maintain the hygiene and safety of medical institutions by decontaminating, inspecting, packaging and sterilizing the tools used in the facilities.
Other related titles include Certified Registered Central Service Technician (CRCST), sterilization technician, medical equipment preparer and Sterile Processing and Distribution Technician (SPD), per the Indeed Career Guide.
These are vital — and well-paying — roles that facilities struggle to hire for, mainly because most people don’t know the job exists.
Salaries for entry-level hourly positions range from around $50,000 to $70,000 a year, health care expert Rebecca Hanson told the Wall Street Journal.
However, the national average salary is $74,898 per year, with pay ranging from $57,113 to $98,221 per year, based on Indeed data.
The positions often come with employer benefits such as 401(k) plans, health insurance and paid time off.
Hanson, an executive director at a company that helps train people to join the health care field, said jobs in surgical instrument sterilization can be a great start to other higher-paying roles, such as a radiologist or surgical technician.
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All that’s needed for the position is a certificate and clinical hours, both of which NYC’s LaGuardia Community College offers.
The public institution began surgical instrument sterilization classes in 2015.
Training starts with several months of classroom sessions taught at LaGuardia’s campus in Queens.
The price of admission for the classes is $1,500; however, scholarships can cover most of this cost.
After completing the course, students are given the preliminary certification exam and placed with unpaid internships, which LaGuardia helps them secure.
During training rounds, pupils complete 108 hours of clinical work, according to the New York State Education Department.
Most also continue their paid jobs on the side but eventually get hired by the hospital where they interned.
More than 80% of students complete the program at LaGuardia and finish with a paid job in the field, the WSJ reported.
One of those students is Fatima el Idrissi. The 38-year-old mother of three finished training in 2023 after learning about the occupation on Facebook.
“I had never heard of this job,” she told the WSJ. “Now I’ve got a first step in a hospital, so I can go on to other medical fields if I want.”
She currently makes $34 an hour in a New York City hospital lab owned by Northwell Health, the largest health care system in the state. Her paychecks are double what she made as a child-care aide.
Shyann Lynch learned about the position after she Googled “highest paying job with the shortest amount of time” for training. The 34-year-old managed an Olive Garden in Brooklyn before the COVID-19 pandemic and enrolled at LaGuardia after her internet search pulled up the program.
She initially signed up for a two-year radiologic technology program but switched to the shorter and simpler instrument-sterilization course.
Queensborough Community College, Kingsborough Community College, Borough of Manhattan Community College, The City University of New York, Long Island University and other higher education institutions also offer certification programs.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, surgical technologist roles, a related job, are expected to increase by 6% between 2023 and 2033.
That’s higher than the national average.
This comes as more and more of the fastest-growing careers require only a modest level of tech skills and some sort of certification for positions that can afford most people to live a middle-class life.
Last year, 72% of job openings that required less than a bachelor’s or associate’s degree were in positions with labor shortages, the nonprofit research organization Burning Glass Institute reported to the WSJ.
That statistic could make many Americans happy, as college tuition has reached astonishing levels.
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