When I first realised I wanted out of clinical, the only thing I knew for sure was what I didn’t want, and that was head of department (I’d job shared the in-charge role and spent it refereeing hurt feelings). No one seemed to be able to have difficult conversations with their colleagues or set boundaries, and I didn’t want to deal with that day in day out.
What I could actually picture doing was project work, because QI projects and working parties were everywhere in the hospital and that looked heaps more my style.
I’ve been chatting with a few of you this week - and you’re telling me exactly what you want from your next role:
🙅♀️ “Something that is not so people facing”
🏡 “I would love a work from home job/ that wouldn’t hit my pay”
💸 “wouldn’t be reliant on patients seen”
But they are really just a list of work conditions, and none of it tells me what you want to be doing.
The work you can picture tends to be the work you can see from where you’re standing. So, in public health, that’s project management and policy. And in private practice, it’s more likely operations or business development.
Working out which roles fit your desired list of conditions, and what they pay, is week one of my 1:1 mentoring pilot. In four weeks you’ll know:
- the 2 or 3 non-clinical roles that suit your list
- how to translate your clinical skills into their language
- and be chatting to folks who’re already doing them.
Next: what your frustrations at work point at, mapped to non-clinical roles.
This first went out to Post-MDT subscribers on 18 October 2026. You can read the original edition in the archive, or get the next one in your inbox.
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