Hi! My name is Mary. I love learning and sharing new things with others. My desire is to assist in the education of the Allied Health professions in developing educational materials needed for training and to offer continuing education products. I often find myself frustrated that the options to fulfill my continued education requirements are slim. One day I realized I could make a difference. I love to teach. I love to create educational material. My professional career has been in the medical realm for over 30 years. Why not combine all three and create my own company to provide the resources for others?
Over the years, I have found the greatest satisfaction in helping others learn. I had never considered teaching, until I was asked. I needed a job, so I tried. I was hooked! There is nothing greater than to watch an individual come in, then grow and change as they learn the necessary skills (like give an injection or draw blood) and feel good about their accomplishments. Life has a way of making changes and I left teaching to worked in other areas. During this time, I still found myself mentoring and helping entry-level employees learn the job. As a transcriptionist, I was often listening to difficult dictation and explaining the physician mumbling. As a medical assistant, I was teaching new concepts and sharing the latest information. I took advantage of opportunities to develop inservice training. When the opportunity came to reenter teaching, I jumped at it. Then came my opportunity to achieve my own educational goals and I made the decision to leave my teaching position, so I could concentrate on my studies.
My professional background includes over 30 years in a variety of medical fields. Of course, life comes with twists and turns and some of the changes were due to trying to figure out what I was going to do when I grew up. My training has included Army LPN, medical assistant, medical transcriptionist, and massage therapist. I have spent time employed as each of them as well as an allied health instructor. I had the most fun when I was able to play with words and create educational materials for my class. If I wanted something for the class and I could not find it, I would try to create it. I was also introduced to reviewing textbooks during this last teaching position and that led to my latest adventure.
After all this time, I feel I have finally, (maybe), found what I want to be when I grow up. About eight years ago, a friend asked me to proofread his monthly newsletter. This was great! Now when those typos would jump off the page at me, I was actually allowed to let the author know. In fact, he wanted to know. And he paid me!! What a concept! Then I put myself on the list to review medical assisting textbooks. One day, an editor contacted me about proofreading and as they say “the rest is history”! Over the past three years, I have assisted with various textbooks covering medical terminology, anatomy and physiology, medical assisting, billing and coding, massage therapy, mammography, and my current project is for pharmacists. I have proofread, copyedited, prepared manuscripts with tagging, created test banks, glossary spreadsheets, PowerPoint presentations, lesson plans, tested student resource CDs, and various other projects, and I get to do all this while sitting at home, barefoot!! After all these years, there is finally someone who is willing to pay me for my little quirks and attention-to-detail. Someone appreciates that I can pick up inconsistencies and they reward me with a paycheck! How cool is that! Therefore, this class is just one more piece of my foundation as I move closer to the opening of my company, C.E.R.A.H. of Idaho, Comprehensive Educational Resources for Allied Health of Idaho.
