The Truth: More School is Hard to Swallow
“Do I really need [insert degree here] to get out of the clinic?”
KEY TAKEAWAYS from Next Degree:
Question: Is going back to school essential for a clinical pivot?
Outcome: No, it is a tool that aligns in specific situations
Specific Pivot(s): Role, Industry, Geography
Additional Resources: The Personal MBA — Josh Kaufman
Relevance: Isolated “business skill attainment” can be acquired independently
Final Thoughts: School is expensive, but with value-adds beyond skills attainment
An MBA helped get me beyond the clinic. This does not mean it is the only way, and it definitely does not mean it is the best way.
This is, by far, the most common question I get across all healthcare professions — MDs, Nurses, PT/OT/Athletic Trainers, even personal trainers. In fact, there are several permutations of this question: MBA, Coding Boot Camp, Ph.D…the list goes on. For me, the MBA was a means to get into the healthcare innovation ecosystem at the University of Oxford during a period of time when TONs of financial and human resources were being dumped into a singular goal: accelerating medical innovation to scrape the world out of the COVID-19 pandemic.
I’m going to be 100% honest with you — after 9 years of school (undergraduate, graduate, residency, and fellowship), more school was the last thing I wanted to think about. On top of the incredible amount of student debt needed to enter clinical practice, taking two years off (the standard for US business schools) AND introducing additional debt was, literally, the most unappealing thing I could think of.
I’m going to take a step back from my specific circumstance and be objective: the math in 2020 came out to nearly $400,000 in overall costs to attend a US business school — two years of tuition, two years of living expenses, and two years of foregone salary. Just let that sink in — $400,000 on top of what was already spent for medical training. Why on earth would anyone even consider this, especially those of us that are less risk-tolerant (a hallmark of a good clinician, by the way — “do no harm”.)
Something you’ll hear me talk about a lot is this idea of a growth mindset, which you’ve probably heard about before. The basic premise of a growth mindset is converting “can’t” statements into open-ended, “how would you” questions for further exploration.
Let’s give it a shot in my specific circumstance — “in no way could I afford or tolerate business school expenses” becomes “how would I de-risk the opportunities afforded by a top business school?” For me, this led me to unknowingly exploring my first pivot — geography. Interestingly, both the University of Oxford and the University of Cambridge are two of the top universities in the world (de-risking the idea of a poor school investment), and are 1-year MBA programs (de-risking the financial and opportunity costs of two years of tuition and two years of foregone salary). Try it out for yourself — convert a “can’t” statement into a “how would I” question, and try and write a school paper about it in a set time frame. For me, this converted my anxiety (leaving my home country and pausing my clinical career) into a structured exercise that I had done many times over — writing a school paper. The objectivity is helpful when trying to deconstruct stressful and complex topics.
Speaking of which, back to the original topic — Do I need to go back to school to achieve a career pivot? The short answer, in my experience, is a resounding no.
If your identified gap in achieving your healthcare career pivot of choice is a gap in skills, these can be attained through a little research, disciplined time management, and curiosity. In the physical therapy world, I use the analogy of achieving a board certification in orthopedics, sports, neurology, etc.
Do you need to be OCS-certified to be an excellent orthopedic physical therapist? No. But will a residency program accelerate that process and introduce you to other high achieving, ambitious people? Absolutely.
A book I absolutely love for its simplicity in regards to business concepts and business skill attainment is The Personal MBA by Josh Kaufman. It does a fantastic job of boiling down all the complex business jargon used by businessmen, translating business concepts and strategies into everyday lingo that anyone can use in their day-to-day endeavours.
So, if that’s the case, then what are the additional benefits of going back to school (or, in my case, an MBA)? Well, if we separate the overall environment I made my personal decision in (trying to scale my impact beyond patient care during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic), business school attracts a certain type of person — motivated, ambitious, curious, and generally impatient with the status quo.
If wielded appropriately, you will actually learn much more from your classmates, their past experiences (and mistakes), and views on societal problems than from the actual business school curriculum.
Not to say you won’t learn anything from the curriculum — you will learn a tremendous amount. But, a distinct advantage of coming from clinical care is bedside manner — in my experience, clinicians are incredibly emotionally intelligent, and thrive in fast-paced, ambiguous environments (such as dealing with 20+ patients per day, each with different diagnoses, on top of other critical workflow requirements like billing, note taking, and patient education). Use this to your advantage if you decide the “back to school” route is right for your goals — universities are collections of the brightest minds in society, and you can learn a lot by listening, asking, and taking the initiative to reach out and meet a clustered group of new, potentially brilliant, people.
The advantage of being comfortable with heavy patient caseloads is exponentially magnified in an environment like business school, where “building connections” is a core value-add schools advertise (with good reason).
So, is going back to school the only way to pivot? Absolutely not. Does it offer additional benefits (at a significant financial cost)? Absolutely.
Check out Next Degree if you’re a clinician exploring what a non-clinical role could look like, and decide if going back to school is truly necessary to help achieve your goals.
