Future skills

I'm going to have a look into the crystal ball here and think about what I might be future career might be like based on demand and supply (me). I'll have a look on the supply side first, ie me. I have an undergraduate degree in Resource Economics and a Masters in Health Services Management. I now have 6-years post graduate work experience in the health, government and NGO sectors, one of which was in SE Asia. I don't envisage myself doing a PhD, but may consider doing another university degree or further study with my professional college if I can see a demand for this. I enjoy working both in health, and am willing to work in the government, NGO and private sector. I have the potential to use my skills in economics more.

Now I'll consider the demand side. I will stay in the health sector because it is growing sector where work will be available. Plus I like working with people, I know it well enough now and know the people. Aged care will increase in the future, and maybe when it gets to a stage where it's big enough to hire more support/ corporate people that's when I might work - 15 years maybe? I think people will demand more information, eg from websites and the ability to write well will be important. Communicating this way still has a lot of potential for productivity eg admissions and discharge information, where people can log in and view their health information. I may be directing this in future.

I think as Australia becomes more populous and even wealthier, people will demand more health care, medical and surgical procedures like in the United States. This may not be my favourite thing to do, but would enjoy doing this temporarily. There is a chance that as developing countries become wealthier, they may need some advice from overseas, which I might be able to provide. The more populous the country, I'm not sure whether we'll have the issues of drugs and crime maybe related to social disconnection. I hope not, so I predict I won't be working for decades on end in this sector. I think with the communication and organisation tools available on the internet that assist with productivity, it is important to keep up. Otherwise it would be very possible to be unproductive compared with your younger colleagues.

The conclusion? So I suppose my future career is likely working in a support role in aged care or hospitals. Probably more likely to be in the private sector than ever. Now what should I do? I need to work on using those electronic tools that assist with productivity and discovering new ones, and keep my communication and information management skills up-to-date with the times. I'm learning to micro blog at the moment. It's probably good to keep up-to-date with politics. I think the way we use internet that there may be a general drop in the level of people skills and therefore more valued. I'd better keep those up too. I would like to become an expert at all of this and become a consultant toward the end of my career, hopefully with friends/ peers who I enjoy working with in the industry.

I'll have to look back at this for years to come to see how much of this is right or wrong.