Friday's Internet Edition, July 25, 2008.
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“Alamance Regional Medical Center was looking for somebody [in the cancer information management field],” Essick said. “Its management was willing to take me on even though I hadn’t finished my degree. They wanted somebody who was going to be eligible to take the national certification exam within a year of hire. With the completion of this course, I will be eligible to take it.”
Essick, who has been working for Alamance Regional since January, is a native of West Lafayette, Ind. She got earned a degree in graphic arts from Purdue University and worked 15 years in the printing business after moving to High Point in 1988. After L&E Packaging, the second company she worked for, was sold, Essick decided to change careers and look for something in the health care field.
“I heard about this program through a two-week course at GTCC (Guilford Technical Community College),” she said. “Then I did some volunteer work in record-keeping High Point Regional Hospital before I enrolled here in the fall of ‘05.”
Essick has maintained an A average throughout the two years she was in the Cancer Information Management program. Except for two semesters of anatomy and physiology, Essick took the courses in this program online.
“Joanne represents this first class of Cancer Information Management very well,” said Myra Thompson, community relations manager for DCCC. “As baby boomers get older, the need for people in her field will continue to grow.”
Essick recommends others looking for a career change or getting ready to start a career check into the curriculum she has just graduated from.
“This is a field I think I’m going to really like,” Essick said. “I like the overall feeling that I’m going to be doing something meaningful.”
Her husband, Reid Essick, also appreciates that feeling.
“I think it’s great what Joanne has accomplished,” Reid Essick said. “She has really worked hard for it.”
Joanne Essick gets the day off from work while she graduates. Tomorrow it will back at the job at Alamance Regional. But the good news is she is through going to school during the off hours of her full-time job.
“I’m really looking forward to having more free time,” she said.
Staff Writer Kevin Reid can be reached at 472-9500, ext. 230, or at reid@tvilletimes.com.