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Wondering what courses will round out your education in health science? While you can technically pair any number of majors and minors together, there are some secondary degrees that will complement a future in healthcare better than others. Whether you’re dreaming of sports medicine or relentlessly pursuing accreditation in immunology, you have several options to choose from when deciding which minor will complement your Bachelor’s Degree in Health Science.
Psychology
You’ll be working with people for the rest of your life, so it’s a good idea to get to know them. Pay particular attention in courses in abnormal psychology, psychophysiology and psychopharmacology. As a healthcare professional, you won’t be seeing people at their best, so you should make every effort to understand atypical and emotion-fueled behavior. You can even find courses in actual health psychology at certain schools, though the American Psychological Association notes that only a third of universities offer them.
Chemistry
Organic chemistry is a must-have course for anyone going into medicine, but you’ll find many other chemistry courses that are useful to health science majors, including analytic chemistry, biological chemistry and spectroscopy. Generally speaking, anything that works for biochemistry majors will also work for you. You’ll be working quite closely with biological systems in the future, so these courses will be a good investment.
Computer Science
The truth about lab work is that only a small portion is actually done in a clean room with chemicals and fizzing reactions. The rest is all about data analysis and information processing, and to make sense of these numbers and patterns, you’ll need a good foundation in information technology. Computer science will also prove quite useful if you ever need to write your own software for medical research that hasn’t reached the general populace yet. Consider a minor in computer science or medical laboratory science to increase your skills in researching, analyzing, developing and correlating data.
Biology
If you’re majoring in health science, you probably have a few biology classes under your belt already. Many programs, however, transition away from research-based classes in the junior and senior years. Since you may be working in the public sector, many programs have you focus on things like business administration and finance. This means you miss out on a lot of interesting courses that could be a real benefit to a future healthcare professional, like cell physiology and medical biotechnology.
Healthcare Administration
Maybe you do care about business and administration. There’s nothing wrong with that, especially if you dream of opening your own lab one day or working closely with those in medical research fields. A strong background in business will make it all the more easy to start one, especially if you pair it with courses in finance, accounting and economics. You can even attempt a minor in health management if you think you can handle the load. A one-two punch of health sciences and health management will look great on a resume (see: Can I Work in Healthcare Administration With a Degree in Health Science?).
These are just a few of the most complementary minors to a Bachelor’s Degree in Health Science. You’ll have a lot more freedom in completing your secondary degree than your primary degree, so don’t be afraid to experiment with electives and other interests until you find something that clicks.
