It sounds cliché but it’s also true, since I can remember, I wanted to work in healthcare, something about being able to help and look after people always appealed to me. The choice to study nursing was pretty obvious and over the course of the first eight years of my career, it literally allowed me to travel the globe, as I worked in Adult and Paediatric Intensive Care Units (ICU) in Lisboa, London and Sydney.
The human factor might seem quite removed when you look at the main responsibilities of an ICU nurse, which are very technical and involve high maintenance medical devices that replace a patient’s bodily functions. But at the core of all the intravenous lines, beeping devices and choreographed movements of a highly skilled multi-disciplinary team is a vulnerable human being, and their family, that still need looking after.
If you speak to any ICU nurse you might find that they wear their profession on their sleeve, like a badge of honour, and that is because it is such a specialised profession that takes years to master. When I was looking into getting a job in Digital Health it seemed hard to believe that my ICU expertise would be useful in any other environments. I mean, how transferable could my ability to look after a patient assisted by an extracorporeal membrane oxygenation machine (which replaces a patient’s heart and lungs) be in a Digital Health setting?
As I transitioned to Digital Health and worked across a variety of roles, ranging from Clinical Information System Product Owner within an ICU to the equivalent of a Functional Consultant in large scale Electronic Medical Record (EMR) implementations, I found that most of the skills I developed as a nurse were transferable.
1. Critical Thinking:
Nursing: Intensive care nurses need to make quick decisions in high-pressure situations, assess continually changing patient conditions, and prioritise interventions.
Digital Health Consulting: Consultants often face complex problems that require critical analysis and strategic thinking to develop effective solutions.
2. Communication Skills:
Nursing: Effective communication with patients, families, and multi-disciplinary teams is crucial. Nurses need to convey information clearly and succinctly, in time sensitive situations.
Digital Health Consulting: Consultants must communicate with clients, team members, and stakeholders to understand requirements, articulate solutions, and ensure everyone is on the same page.
3. Adaptability:
Nursing: The healthcare environment is dynamic, and nurses must adapt to changes in patient conditions, treatment plans, and technology.
Digital Health Consulting: The Digital Health landscape is constantly evolving, and consultants need to stay current with technology trends and adapt to changes in project requirements.
4. Problem Solving:
Nursing: Intensive Care nurses regularly encounter complex medical issues and must use problem-solving skills to identify and implement the most appropriate interventions.
Digital Health Consulting: Consultants are hired to solve business problems through technology solutions, requiring analytical thinking and creative problem-solving.
5. Teamwork:
Nursing: Nurses are usually the glue that holds the wider multi-disciplinary team together and the ones providing a single view of the patient. Collaborating with other healthcare professionals is crucial for providing comprehensive patient care.
Digital Health Consulting: Consultants work in teams, collaborating with colleagues, clients, and other stakeholders to achieve project goals.
6. Time Management:
Nursing: Nurses need to manage their time effectively to provide timely care, administer medications, and document patient information.
Digital Health Consulting: Consultants often work on multiple projects simultaneously, requiring efficient time management to meet deadlines and deliver quality results.
7. Technical Aptitude:
Nursing: While not the primary focus, nurses heavily rely on technology for providing patient care, be it by utilising Electronic Medical Records, monitoring vital signs and various medical devices.
Digital Health Consulting: A strong foundation in IT skills is essential, and a nursing background is an asset when working on Digital Health projects.
8. Person Centred Service:
Nursing: Patient and family interactions require empathy, active listening, and a focus on meeting their needs.
Digital Health Consulting: Clients are the “customers” in consulting, and effective communication and understanding of their needs are critical for success.
Conclusion
Whilst these skills were useful when working within the Digital Health team of a large Local Health Network it wasn’t until I joined Mav3rik, and by proxy the ‘proper’ Tech world, that I understood how vital they were for implementing meaningful solutions for Healthcare clients. When working in Healthcare it’s easy to forget that everyone lives, and breathes, Health and therefore is on the same page. This is not necessarily the case in the Tech world where things that are second nature, and assumed knowledge, for Digital Health specialists need to be explained and defined so that the whole team understands the problems we are trying to solve and speak the same language as the client.
At Mav3rik, as Digital Health Consultants, we are the link between the clinicians’ needs and how to best deliver technology, because we know better than anyone the problems we are trying to solve with technology but also the issues we risk introducing if we don’t adopt a clinician centred design. EMR is almost a dirty word for most clinicians and the reason why adoption has been such a fragmented experience, is that systems weren’t developed with clinicians, or patients, in mind but were system focused instead. Early EMRs were built with the US market in mind and their main focus was to optimise patient billing and not necessarily how to assist clinicians better provide care. The lack of human centred design has historically generated a big resistance from healthcare professionals in adopting these technologies
At Mav3rik I have found like minded technologists that are happy approaching the Healthcare industry with a beginner’s mindset but bringing with them years of experience. The pairing of very knowledgeable Architects, Functional Consultants and Digital Health Consultants has given us the opportunity to co-design meaningful and impactful solutions that really deliver value to our clients and the population they serve.