I'm looking at a career change. I have bachelors degree in healthcare management and pre counseling. My mental health is going down the drain and do not think I can sustain myself long term in the field of addiction. I was planning on going to grad school for counseling, but entry level data analyst positions pay more than senior counseling positions. I still want to work in healthcare though.
I've seen several data analyst positions within the healthcare field. As someone who is brand new and knows nothing of SQL, where should I start? I have a vast knowledge of the healthcare field and medical coding, but that's about it. Would I need to go back to school or learning on my own and getting certification enough?
It's not often that programmers learn what they're programming for really well. You would have the tremendous advantage of being an SME in the field prior to learning how to program for it.
As the others have stated, SQL and databases in general are actually pretty easy for a beginner to learn. As they've also stated, it's easy to learn and difficult to master. Another advantage that you have being a non-programmer is that you'd have no front-end coder understanding to un-learn. Again, as the others have said, it's a "Declarative" language where you tell it what you want to do and with what and it figures out "HOW" to do it. The problem is that it sometimes has a mind of it's own if you tell it what you want to do the wrong way.
Personally, I love databases and SQL because I don't have to write loops like I had to almost 3 decades ago. The SELECT statement writes the "loops" the system needs behind the scenes and it does a pretty good job of it.
To get started and to really see if you might like SQL (remembering that the money is pretty fantastic, as well), go to the following site and start at the beginning. Don't skip anything. You're new and the knowledge taught by the site is progressive. Heh... in exchange, you can consul me on my addiction to databases and SQL. 😀
Here's the site. Post back if you have questions.
https://www.w3schools.com/sql/default.asp
You've been through school. You know what the difference is between "going through the motions" and actually studying. If you're serious (and I suspect that you are and so recommend you take it seriously), take your time to study each micro lesson they teach on the site. Picture it in your head. Understand it so that you don't forget it. And don't think it's going to take you the 24 hours they say it will if you actually "do it right" and actually learn it instead of "just going through the motions".
Then... that will qualify you to really start learning the really cool/juicy/fun stuff you'd need as a Data Analyst and we can give you some more pointers after that. When you doing the training on the site I pointed you to above, spend some extra time on anything have to do with dates.
Also, be very aware that, just like English in the United States, there are many "dialects" of SQL. For example, DATEDIFF in T-SQL (SQL Server) is a hell of a lot different than the DATEDIFF in Postgres and other database engines. They key is, if you know the basics, then the documentation for any give "dialect" of SQL will make life a whole lot easier for you.
And let us know when you're done on the site so we can teach you about some very important factors in SQL, such as "Pseudo-Cursors" and how to count. I wish they taught such things in "official" training for databases/SQL but almost no one does or, if they do, they teach it way too late, IMHO.
Nice "meeting" someone that wants to "go for it".
--Jeff Moden
Change is inevitable... Change for the better is not.