I’m always being asked about job opportunities, and I always include healthcare at the top of the list.

While jobs in a host of industries are dwindling, especially manufacturing jobs, healthcare is constantly adding workers.

There’s a great story in the Wall Street Journal today about how hospitals are filling the void for jobs lost at factories in Maine and across the country.

“…the number of manufacturing jobs nationwide feel by 48,000 in March and by 310,000 over the past 12 months, health-care employment rose by 23,000 last month and is up 363,000 jobs on the year.”

This is great news for towns that have been hit hard by factory closings.

But, there is one caveat – healthcare jobs are not for everyone.

You can try and try, train and train, but some of us have to face that caring for sick patients isn’t the best career path.

The nurses, doctors and nursing assistants I’ve met tend to have certain personality traits. The one biggest common trait is they can take human suffering without allowing it to cripple them psychologically. Of course they feel pain and sorrow when people suffer or die, but they’re able to move on and do their jobs.

These jobs require a kind of inner strength that’s hard to define. And you have to have the stomach for it. They see things that would make most of our stomachs turn.

Another thing to consider is money. Low-skill, low-education jobs in the manufacturing sector paid a good wage. Not healthcare.

If you’re not a doctor, nurse or lab technician, all of which require training and lots of education, you end up at the bottom end of the salary totem pole. “Personal care attendants,” the Journal article states, “often make little more than minimum wage.”

That said, there are jobs to be had on the administrative side at hospitals and clinics, and while some will require further education, there are opportunities for those without advanced degrees to start in billing offices, for example, and possibly move up.

So, let’s keep all this in perspective. When you hear all the hype about healthcare jobs, that doesn’t necessarily mean good news for everyone. Figure out what you can handle and whether your personality fits the healthcare industry before you leave your job for the world of caring.