Megan Cumor didn't know her particular profession had become obsolete until she lost her job in November of 2010.

She had worked as a certified nursing assistant for 15 years and at Providence Holy Family Hospital when the North Side hospital had a reduction in staff. With experience in a growing industry, she went to find a job, only to find out that hospitals weren't hiring CNAs anymore to do the work she had been doing.

"They said I was qualified but didn't have the right certification anymore," Cumor says. "I thought, 'Are you kidding me?'"

After three months of hearing the same thing—and realizing she didn't want to accept a lower paying job as a CNA at a retirement facility—she enrolled in the medical assistant program at Carrington College's Spokane campus. By the end of this year, she should be a certified medical assistant—and employable once again.

"I'm hoping to get a job immediately," she says. "I'm hoping that happens because of my experience and just by knowing a lot of people, but there's a lot of people in that school going after the same thing I'm going for."

While Cumor worked in health care previously, people who have worked in a spectrum of industries are retraining to qualify for jobs in the health-care sector. While not recession-proof—as evidenced by Cumor's job loss—the industry is growing in Spokane County in terms of overall jobs.

Doug Tweedy, a Spokane-based regional labor economist for the Washington state Employment Security Department, says the number of jobs in the health care sector has grown faster than any other industry during the past 10 years, adding 8,500 health care jobs in the county since 2002.

What's more telling, Tweedy says, is what's happened since the recession hit in 2008. Between then and now, the 11 other industries the department tracks have all suffered a net loss in jobs, but the health-care sector has had a net gain of 2,000 jobs.

Employment Security predicts that the industry will continue to grow. The Spokane Workforce Development Council generates a list of occupations for which workers are in demand, and of the 120 job types on that list, 37 are in health care.

Another gauge of employment health is a job-vacancy survey Employment Security completes twice a year. In the fall 2010 survey, the latest available, surveyed employers in Spokane County reported almost 2,500 job openings, many of which weren't advertised. Of those, about 590 were in the health care sector, more than any other industry, Tweedy says.

The retail sector was second with about 470 job openings, but Tweedy says he would put a "big asterisk" next to that number, because the retail industry typically has a lot of turnover. Consequently, that number might not reflect job growth or greater opportunity within that sector, he says.

Within health care, Tweedy says, the bulk of the job growth has occurred at physician clinics and medical laboratories, with overall employment at hospitals remaining stable but not growing.

Specific professions that are seeing growth range from medical assistants and clinical laboratory technicians to dental hygienists and pharmacy technicians.

Bob Everett, Workforce Investment Act program operator at Spokane-based Career Path Services, says the largest percentage of people that organization retrains go into the health care field. During the 12-month period that ended June 30, about 30 percent of the people who were retraining to enter a new profession were planning to go into health care. The job category with the next highest percentage of retrainees was professional, office, and administration, which includes jobs ranging receptionists to professional managers.

Education to enter the medical field can range from a few weeks of training to become a certified nursing assistant to at least four years of school to become a physician. For the most part, however, people who are coming from another occupation and retraining are going into a profession that requires from several weeks of training to two years of schooling.

In some cases, Everett says, students can receive unemployment benefits without actively seeking employment when going through a retraining program. Tuition assistance also is available through various agencies.

The pay, of course, can vary as widely as the breadth of professions within health care. Generally speaking, though, Everett says an estimated average pay range for retrainees who enter health care is between $15 and $18 an hour, with pay being lower for CNAs and much higher for pharmacists and the like.

Cumor says she was making in the neighborhood of $15 an hour when she was laid off at Holy Family. She hopes to be able to find a job that pays at that rate—or close to it—when she receives her recertification.

Sally Buckbee, a registered nurse at Hospice of Spokane, had been a high school teacher and retrained on her own volition in the early 2000s.

People in the Inland Northwest who want to become RNs either go through a two-year program at the Community Colleges of Spokane or attend the Washington State University College of Nursing, in Spokane. RNs take the same certification test, regardless of which route they take, though Buckbee says there are more management opportunities for nurses with four-year degrees. She says she chose to go to the community college because it provided the quickest route to the profession.

She has been a nurse for seven years now—five of which she's worked at Hospice.

She says the job has its drawbacks: one has to deal with a lot of bodily fluids, and working with children or young adults who are dying can take its toll emotionally.

Far and away, however, the career change proved to be a positive one for her.

"Most of us want to feel we're doing something that matters," Buckbee says. "I get that reinforcement daily."