Just wanted to share that, to my surprise and delight, I've been offered--and have accepted--a job in cancer registry at a local academic medical center. I start in a couple of weeks.
I'm quite certain I'd never have been interviewed for this job had I not completed the Andrews program and described its rigor in my application. There's a specialized credential (CTR) I will need to obtain later, but it's going to be a steep learning curve for about a year before I will be ready to sit for that exam, or indeed, fully know what I'm doing on the job, the manager tells me. I had thought about perhaps heading in the direction of cancer registry at some future point, being interested in the field... but I applied on a whim for this position when I was hunting for entry-level coding jobs; I didn't think I'd hear back, since I didn't have either cancer registry experience or the "required" CTR credential; even so, I got an interview, and I somehow beat out applicants possessing both.
So the takeaway is: By all means, apply to every job that interests you; take a shot at it. "Chance favors the prepared mind." I'm excited about this job... and thanks again to the cap'n and crew of the Good Ship Andrews. =)
Wow, Pam - congratulations! Once you've settled in a bit, would you come back and share more about what you're doing? I'm so glad you get to start off in the cancer registry field rather than going in that direction later down the road since it interests you.
Way to go!
Congratulations, Pam! All of your hard work was worth it! :)
I'm excited about your new job. What an excellent opportunity! I hope you'll keep us updated.
You made this happen and deserve all of the congratulations you are getting. Here's one more,
Congratulations on a job well done!
Thanks to all you kind folks. Bit of a whirlwind right now, what with the new job and working on training my weary middle-aged brain to transition from 16 years of working second shift to suddenly working "normal office hours"... hard on the circadian rhythms... but I promise I'll keep you posted and share some information later. This work is in the same ballpark as coding, just more specialized... there's even an ICD "branch" for it, currently ICD-O-3, actually. And the casefinding process utilizes ICD-9 and/or 10 as tools to locate reportable cases. So I'll be using a lot of the skills learned here, as well as brushing up on my morphology and histology of neoplasms!
Cheers...
Wow! What a great post! Thanks for sharing your good news. Best wishes in your new adventure!