Hello, I'm interested in getting in to the sleep field and I was thinking about becoming a registered polysomnographer.
1. It this a solid career choice?
2. Is sleep medicine a dying field?
3. Room for advancing if I decide to become a sleep tech?
1. I would advise against it
2. No
3. Minimal.
Detail: Sleep is not a dying field but the number of and reimbursement for in-lab sleep studies is steadily shrinking, with more and more home studies being done. Thus, less overall need for sleep techs to run lab studies. So, being a sleep tech is certainly not a big growth field at this point.
There’s limited room for “advancement” per se as a tech, although there is some degree of flexibility to move into other roles if you keep your eyes open for opportunities. After a couple years of running studies you might get to be a senior/lead tech, with some supervisory/training duties for other techs. You may be able to move into some type of daytime admin office job, particularly at a big medical center, maybe after 10 to 20 years experience be the admin head of a sleep program.
Depending on the practice, there may be opportunities to work days doing stuff like setting up patients on CPAP, arranging home testing, etc. Other techs who get tired of night work may get daytime jobs where they just score studies. I’d be wary of banking on this particular option as AI gets better and mote widely used and auto-scoring gets really good. Some techs pick up EEG training and move into that since it’s usually a day job.
So, while there’s some degree of flexibility in being a sleep tech, there’s not a really a well-delineated “career path” with a series of clear-cut and sequential promotions down the road.
Plus, unless you’re a certain type of person, long-term night work kinda sucks after a while.
