If I can do it, so can you

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Hey Health Techies!

It’s been awhile since I shared some healthcare inspiration based on my own journey. But over the past few weeks I’ve received a lot of questions about how I initially made the leap into tech, so I thought I’d answer those questions along with some insights about what I’ve learned about career transitions along the way.

Whether you’re considering a career transition, or you are interested in how my perspective has changed since leaving clinical care…let’s get into it.

When I first decided to leave my safe, comfy job in community pharmacy. It was scary. I was leaving to go to the first healthcare startup that I had ever really heard of, but somehow I knew it was the right choice.

I was only 4 years out of school, but I had already realized that there wasn’t room for growth where I was. I don’t think that was something that I knew I needed until it was sort of taken away from me.

It’s funny, because as healthcare professionals we go to school for so long thinking that our degree and our first job is the final destination when it turns out that it’s really just the beginning. A few years later, I realized that I was already ready for a new adventure.

So what did that look like?

🪪 New license

One thing about working as a clinician in digital health is the fact that you may need to obtain multiple licenses. I’ve worked with pharmacists that have held over a dozen different state licenses as a part of the job.

While I never quite reached those numbers, I did have to obtain an additional state license to qualify for my initial health tech role. This was an investment I made in myself and my career ahead of actually having the offer in hand, but it turned out to be so worth it.

I still see this as a requirement for many clinical roles, but of course this isn’t an issue if your intent is to go nonclinical. Nonclinical roles rarely require a license of any kind and are positions often held by people without clinical background at all.

🤓 Learning on the job

I get a lot of questions about whether I took any courses or did any certifications before I landed my first nonclinical job, and the answer is no.

That’s not to say that I don’t see the value in it, but I was learning so much on the job that I just really didn’t need to. And not only that, bootcamps and certifications are great for teaching you the basics, but it’s applying it that actually gets you the experience that you need and enables you to land jobs. I was doing all of that as a part of my day to day.

I was never intentionally going nonclinical. I was simply following the work that I was interested in, and that’s where it led.

If I were to do it all over again, would I take a course? Perhaps. But I would only do so with a very specific goal in mind. Want to be a product manager? Take a product management course. Want to do data analytics? Learn SQL.

But if you are saying to yourself “I want to break into health tech, what course should I take?” then you’re doing this job search thing backwards in my opinion.

💥 Big impact

I often say that my move into nonclinical work has allowed me to have even bigger patient impact than I was having before. Certainly this might not be true for every clinician or every specialty, but for me this was the case.

I was working at a relatively low volume pharmacy (though with a drive-thru and vaccinations that’s certainly debatable). We did about 250 scripts per day. That means for every working day, I was impacting roughly 200-250 patients’ lives. They expected the right medications to be ready for them on time.

Since going nonclinical, I’ve worked on process improvement, operational efficiency, and products both patient and clinician-facing. When I think about the volume pumping through all of those systems, I realize that the number of patients that are impacted either directly or indirectly by my work has increased exponentially.

That’s the thing about doing nonclinical work. I can build something once and have impact for years, as opposed to in the pharmacy when everyday it felt like I had hit the “reset” button. It’s a tradeoff of course because I don’t work anywhere near as close with patients as I used to. I used to work with them directly. They used to know me by name. Now they have no idea who is behind the buttons that they push.

For some, this would be too far removed from the patient to feel like healthcare. For me, it was certainly an adjustment, but I’ve grown to really appreciate having more scaled impact at this stage in my career.

Know that if that’s what you’re after in your career as well, you can do it. If can do it, so can you.

And if you want to hear more about my journey, you can check out some interviews that I’ve done here and here.

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Until next time,

Lauren