Over the course of my almost 10 years working in hospitals and healthcare, I've started my fair share of new jobs. I worked in three different roles during my five and a half years at Boston Children's Hospital, then moved to Baltimore for an Administrative Fellowship at Johns Hopkins Medicine, and now I am about two months in to my second role at UPMC.
When I first graduated college and even over the last few years, I had a few people tell me to be cautious of moving around too much or too quickly. While I understand this and think there can be some truth to this, I actually believe it depends much more on what you are getting out of the current role you are in and what the next opportunities are. For me, I have some pretty lofty goals of where I want to be in my healthcare career one day. In order to get there, I want to feel that I am constantly growing, which means that I am being challenged and am learning new things. Every time I have moved from one role to the next, these are the things I think about. I am pretty proud of the various roles I have held and the hospitals/health systems I have been fortunate to work at. There is also not one, correct way to do this and when speaking to various current healthcare leaders, they all had long, winding paths and many times worked in many various roles, some unrelated, before getting to where they are today. Before making the decision to move to the next opportunity, these are the questions I ask and answer for myself:
What is the experience I am getting in my current role?
What am I learning and what skills am I developing?
Are there areas of the job I haven't explored yet and need to? Or areas I need to spend more time on?
Am I being challenged?
If a new role presents itself, what opportunities for growth, learning, and development does this role bring?
Does it align with my values and career goals and will it help me get to that next step?
Who will I be working with? Are there people and potential mentors I can work with and learn from?
Will this role help expand my knowledge, diversify my experience, and help me take the next step in my career journey?
Ultimately, I don't think there's a perfect defined timeline of when to move to a new role. There are so many factors that go into this decision - both personal and professional! I knew after the Administrative Fellowship experience that I wanted direct management experience. And I have since learned that people management is HARD, but I am also learning so much about myself and about human behavior, and what it takes to be a good leader by managing other people. In my new role as Director of Operations for General Internal Medicine, I have taken on a larger scope than my previous role and have also moved over to the adult side of healthcare after most of my experience has been in pediatric healthcare. My goal was to continue to expand my scope and diversify my experience and this role checked those boxes for me.
Once in a new role, I have learned it is important to take time to meet with people and learn as much as possible. For the first few months, I have been working on making the rounds and meeting with all different team members - learning about their role, what's going well, what the challenges are, ideas they may have etc. I make it a point each week (and really each day) to get up from my desk (which can be challenging when all meetings are still virtual) and walk around the clinics and say hi and check-in. While I love talking to people, this phase can be difficult for me because it requires a lot of patience. Right now is not the time to make changes or suggestions or try implementing new things - it is just the time to learn and gather information. My brain is wired to problem solve and make things better so I automatically start to think of ideas I want to try, but I have to remember that when in a new role, it is most important to start by listening to others and not by doing anything just yet. I am also managing multiple sites and the other thing I am working on early on is the frequency that I travel to the other sites and meet with the managers and teams. It can be easy to stay at the main "flagship" location where it is busier and there are more people, but it is equally as important to make regular visits to the other sites.
Leadership presence and building relationships are some of the most important aspects of being a successful leader. This is where my focus is right now.
I'd love to hear some of your thoughts on your approach to starting a new role and what you focus on!