my j o b
A new lj friend asked me about my job, so I thought I'd devote a post to it, since it's never anything I can answer in a one-liner, or at least a one-liner that tells you anything.
I'm a Certified Tumor Registrar, or CTR as it's known in the biz. I got my certification this past fall after passing a test which requires some educational and work experience prerequisites.
I work for the state of North Carolina Central Cancer Registry. Every state has a CCR, and CCRs collect data on every person who has cancer in their state. What that means is that there is a law that requires hospitals and other health care facilities to report any patient who has been diagnosed or treated for cancer at their facility, and sometimes even if the patient just has active cancer - which is the case in North Carolina. So what gets reported is demographic info, info on the cancer itself, including stage info, and treatment info. Yes, private data like social security numbers, birth dates, other medical conditions. I'm just mentioning that because nobody for the most part realizes this happens. And I know people freak out about SSNs, but from a database point of view, they are the best little chunk of data to identify a unique person. So yeah, there's lots of security involved in all of this.
What I do specifically is a combination of abstracting data to QCing other people's data, and data management. Abstracting data means reading patients charts' and coding data - that is, categorizing info, so that it can be quantified. This is used for everything from surveillance - keeping track of what's actually going on out in the population - to research, to studying outcomes for treatment, etc. So, I'm not a statistician, but statisticians and epidemiologists use the data I'm plunking down for lots of stuff.
I work with smaller hospitals in western North Carolina to either: make sure they are getting their data reported on time and with some degree of accuracy, or I do their work for them, if they have a smaller caseload. Which means a bit of travel here and there, which I actually like. I also answer questions, train people in from time to time, other various projects.
I like this job because it's got a nice variety of stuff to do, and I pretty much manage my own work schedule, and now I work from home (except when travelling) so overall it's a pretty sweet deal. My job isn't the passion of my life, but it works well with the introvert and analytical sides of my personality. And I'm good at it.
I'm a Certified Tumor Registrar, or CTR as it's known in the biz. I got my certification this past fall after passing a test which requires some educational and work experience prerequisites.
I work for the state of North Carolina Central Cancer Registry. Every state has a CCR, and CCRs collect data on every person who has cancer in their state. What that means is that there is a law that requires hospitals and other health care facilities to report any patient who has been diagnosed or treated for cancer at their facility, and sometimes even if the patient just has active cancer - which is the case in North Carolina. So what gets reported is demographic info, info on the cancer itself, including stage info, and treatment info. Yes, private data like social security numbers, birth dates, other medical conditions. I'm just mentioning that because nobody for the most part realizes this happens. And I know people freak out about SSNs, but from a database point of view, they are the best little chunk of data to identify a unique person. So yeah, there's lots of security involved in all of this.
What I do specifically is a combination of abstracting data to QCing other people's data, and data management. Abstracting data means reading patients charts' and coding data - that is, categorizing info, so that it can be quantified. This is used for everything from surveillance - keeping track of what's actually going on out in the population - to research, to studying outcomes for treatment, etc. So, I'm not a statistician, but statisticians and epidemiologists use the data I'm plunking down for lots of stuff.
I work with smaller hospitals in western North Carolina to either: make sure they are getting their data reported on time and with some degree of accuracy, or I do their work for them, if they have a smaller caseload. Which means a bit of travel here and there, which I actually like. I also answer questions, train people in from time to time, other various projects.
I like this job because it's got a nice variety of stuff to do, and I pretty much manage my own work schedule, and now I work from home (except when travelling) so overall it's a pretty sweet deal. My job isn't the passion of my life, but it works well with the introvert and analytical sides of my personality. And I'm good at it.