1 - My education is some university, no degree.  Plus I got my MTA in database fundamentals.  Experience is 7 years as a database administrator and current position database administrator
2 - I started with minimum wage jobs, then moved to a production assembler (soldering circuit boards mostly), then moved to IT and finally ended in  a DBA career
3 - I am actually not in healthcare.  I misread your post as that being a requirement.  Sorry.  I work in the manufacturing industry
4 - daily, I monitor the SQL databases, write C# code, update software/servers, and write/manage reports.  Weekly, I verify the SQL backups and infrequently I repair bad SQL servers
5 - I enjoy the challenge of providing end users with the data they require and trying to get that from what they ask for
6 - I know TSQL, C#, VB, vbscript, bat, some powershell, 
7 - basic IT troubleshooting has helped a lot.  It is helpful when an end user reports that something is "slow" or "not working" to be able to determine if the problem is actually the database or something unrelated.
8 - I have only worked with SQL Server
9 - I think that depends on the company.  Where I work, getting my foot in the door as a production assembler helped me to get up to being a DBA.  If you are unable to get a job somewhere where you can prove you CAN do the DBA work, I'd look at the requirements that potential employers are asking for.  If they are looking for a university degree, get that.  If they don't, look at what they are looking for and learn that.  Knowing backup and recovery as well as various HA/DR solutions will help you get a job as a junior DBA.  That and knowing SSIS, SSRS and even SSAS.
10 - I enjoy being a DBA.  The main reason I left IT was I was starting to find it very repetitive.  DBA work is a LOT less repetitive than IT work.
11 - I am not sure what a "Clinical Analyst" is, but from my understanding, a busness analyst focuses more on the busniess end of things and tends to build more reports for end users.  A database analyst would focus more on the administration side of things like building new databases
12 - I don't really understand the firt part of the question, but for the second, he most important users of the data are the end users.  As a DBA, I don't care much about what the actual data IS in the database, as long as the end users can get it and I can provide them with what they need.  Having a 5 in the 3rd row, 5th column or a 10 in that field makes no difference to me as long as the data still makes sense.
13 - Troubleshooting problems depends entirely on the problem.  For example, if a service broker queue goes down, you need to know how to get it back up as quickly as you can.  It could be a deadlock in which case turning it back on may just work.  Or it could be a foreign key violation and you may need to disable a trigger to get the data to insert and manually adjust the message to get it to insert.  We have a lot of SSIS packages that run nightly and we had one fail last night.  I figured out the issue, contacted the developer of the package and asked them to work with the end user to resolve it.  Had they not been here, I would have had to figure out how best to resolve that problem.  It was a "divide by 0" error.
14 - favorite resource for troubleshooting... that is an interesting one.  built in DMV's are good, profiler is good, database health monitor is good, redgate SQL Monitor is good... those are my main go-to for troubleshooting... if all of those fail me, I post on this forum.  As for learning new skills, a lot of it is just trial and error.  Or posting on this forum.
15 - greatest motivation is money.  It sounds petty, but it is really the reason I do my job.  That and I enjoy the challenges that sometimes come up.  Like making a 5 minute SQL query run in less than 1 second?  That is fun.  I have always enjoyed optimizing code and I am getting better every day when I read my own old code.

I hope my answers help, even though I am not in the health care industry.