In the first part of this I asked you to go find your trail of breadcrumbs, the stuff you get pulled into - maybe at work, maybe outside of work - that isn't strictly your responsibility, nobody asked you to do it, but nek minut you've taken it on.
If you've got your list, let's talk through what to actually do with it (and if you don't have your list, go back and dig in). The key is that we don't just look at what's on the list, we look at what kind of problem or challenge we are drawn into tackling.
Like everything - they are obvious in hindsight. For me I was already on the working party looking at how our health district measured up against the national standard for hip fracture care. That's where I learned we weren't performing well on day 1 mobilisation and as the ortho senior who'd had a grandmother go through hip fracture when I was a uni student it did not sit well with me that these patients weren't being given every chance to mobilise.
Around the same time (fortuitously) our district had had an external review of Allied Health, and it showed physio was over-servicing/not as efficient as we should've been.
Which meant our priority system had to be out of whack. And I knew our hip fracture patients got bumped down the priority list pretty quickly. Which meant it was easy for them to end up getting deprioritised, and essentially led to poorer outcomes for them.
Nobody came and tapped me on the shoulder to say "hey Teala can you fix this" it was just one of those things that I couldn't not do. So I used those two data points to go to the HOD and senior staff and get buy-in for an actual review of how we prioritised patients.
Day 1 mobilisation for hip fracture patients went from 63% in 2018 to 93% in 2021.
That's now a convincing data point of how I can lead projects to have impact.
So back to your list - for each of the crumbs you found, ask: what type of problem was I actually drawn to solving there?
A few starting points, not the full list (the quiz digs deeper):
- 🔧 Operations & Systems you usually find yourself spotting the broken process or systems before anyone else does, the quality improvement queen.
- 📋 Project & Delivery getting things over the line, suggesting new ways the department can deliver scalable care, diving into leading new services or programs.
- 🤝 People & Culture looking after the humans stuck inside the system - maybe you're on the social committee, you love being part of recruiting new team, or you're the clinical supervision champion.
- 📣 Marketing & Content explaining it, persuading, telling the story - you re-write all the handouts, patient information and education, you probably love running the group sessions.
- 📊 Product & Data working out what's actually going on, you dive into your own stats, your team's and the department's. You know all about the LOS or PVA for each of the conditions you look after.
Whatever you land on, use that as your filter. Stop scrolling Seek for anything vaguely non-clinical, start searching with some intention instead.
Next: turning this into actual CV lines.
This first went out to Post-MDT subscribers on 16 August 2026. You can read the original edition in the archive, or get the next one in your inbox.