The learning curve was steep in 2008 when Joy Dark first entered the IT industry and landed smack dab in the healthcare environment. But today there’s a cert for that.

Coming from an 80s, tech-forward home, “[My mom] knew [a PC] was the most important thing to have,” Dark said of her early interest in computing. “I found out recently that she took out a second mortgage to buy our first PC. I remember it sitting on our counter and trying to figure out how to get to the C: prompt. It was awesome.”

That fascination ignited Dark’s interested in the field. By 2004, she was working with her mother, Jean Andrews, noted author of dozens of books on computer software, hardware and the internet. When Dark decided to follow her mom’s footsteps into computer-based publishing, Andrews encouraged her to first get real-world, hands-on experience.

Learning IT

Dark networked her way to a helpdesk job at Community Health Systems in Franklin, TN. While she primarily took phone calls and reset passwords, Dark was also thrown into the medical ring where she ran up against unfamiliar terminology.

“There were times when I didn’t even know what the nurse was saying,” Dark remembers. Luckily, Dark’s two sisters were physicians. “I would call my sister to say, ‘I think the nurse was saying, “CBC,” but what is that?’”If Dark had had the opportunity to take CompTIA’s Healthcare IT Technician certification before her job with Community Health Systems, she would have known that a CBC is a blood count on day one.

“It would have definitely given me a leg up,” Dark said. “It would have saved me a lot of time. I was interrupting my team leader to ask questions because I didn’t understand the medical terminology, the different terms and the work flow. I just didn’t know it.”

CompTIA’s Healthcare IT Technician certification exam, first offered in 2011, covers government regulatory requirements, organizational behavior, IT operations, medical business operations and security all pertaining to the healthcare industry.

“People usually work for about three years [in one job] and then they move on or move up,” Dark explained about the rapid turnover fueled by the growth in the healthcare IT industry. “[Hiring managers] are excited to have that certification to look for [because before it they were] just hiring IT professionals and having to teach them healthcare on the job.”

Dark strengthened her IT skills, became more familiar with healthcare lingo and moved up to progressively more challenging positions. By 2010, she had taken a job as a support operations specialist. There she worked with the deployment team and flew to hospitals acquired by Community Health Systems. She also oversaw switching the hospital over to the Community Health Systems’ systems, training the staff on the new systems and helping them with the major transition.

Learning to Write

By this point in Dark’s IT career, she had a job she loved and about 2 ½ years of real-world experience with Community Health Systems. Then her mom called.

“My mom was about to start a new edition of A+ books, and deadlines were hitting hard,” Dark said. “She needed help and she felt like, at that point, I had enough experience. I left the job [as the support operations specialist] to help my mom.”

Dark went back to the writing world with work experience, A+ certification and knowledge of the inner-workings of healthcare IT. As CompTIA was introducing its Healthcare IT Technician certification, Dark became an integral part of developing the certification.

“I found out about the Healthcare IT certification because CompTIA asked my mom if she knew of any field experts, and she mentioned me,” Dark said. “I provided expert advice on what the content should include.” Dark was one of the first people to take the test and pass CompTIA’s new certification.

Dark’s mom wrote her first book after she saw a need for people trained in computer repair. As a college teacher during the advent of PC’s, she wrote her own handouts because textbooks and formal instruction didn’t exist. “Textbook companies would come by and she’d ask if they had a textbook yet for her class,” Dark said. “They kept saying, ‘No,’ and then they noticed the stack of handouts on her desk.” The textbook company took her handouts to the publisher who then came back and asked Dark’s mom to write the book.

Dark’s own path is similar as she too wrote the book for a field during its infancy.

In her mom’s conversation with her publisher, she mentioned Dark had worked in healthcare IT for a while but had returned to writing. “That got them thinking,” Dark said. “There’s a new healthcare IT certification,” and they needed a book.

Published by Pearson IT Certification, Dark, with her mom as a mentor, wrote “CompTIA Healthcare IT Technician HIT-001 Cert Guide” in July 2012.

Dark stressed that the certification is useful in more positions than you may guess and can even benefit network or security specialized positions. “Once you know A+, Network+ and Security+ backgrounds, you’re learning how healthcare applies to those fields, in addition to learning government regulations and work flow,” she said.

“The certification opens up positions for employment. The industry is just growing exponentially now. There’s a huge employment opportunity. Even if you think you’re interested in networking, hop over and add the healthcare IT cert.”