How I Moved From Healthcare to Data Analytics and Why You Should Too
I knew early on in my occupational therapy career that it was not going to be my “forever” career.
A nonexistent work-life balance, the expectation to either work off the clock or somehow meet the elusive 90%+ productivity demand, feeling disrespected and like the lowest person on the totem pole, piles of paperwork and documentation, little upward growth… it all added up very quickly. Add to that, the lack of mentorship and supervision, and I had myself a perfect storm of dissatisfaction and burn out.
You might ask, “So if it was that unfulfilling, you left the field immediately then, right?”
Nope.
“You left after a couple of years and multiple settings, right?”
Not quite.
“You left the field after working for five years and with three different populations…right?”
Don’t I wish.
What really happened: After eight years in the field, four populations, and five different positions, I finally left occupational therapy.
Backing up a little bit: I got serious about my search for my next career about six years ago. I knew two things early on: first, that I was interested in getting into tech, and second, that I wanted something entirely different. I wasn’t sure how my skills as an occupational therapist would ever apply outside of the healthcare world.
After all, what other jobs would require me to know how to transfer patients, use a sock aid, form the letters of the alphabet correctly, and recognize the difference between sensory seeking and sensory sensitivity?
Not many, as it turns out.
Leveraging my transferable skills
I had to start thinking strategically. I wouldn’t be able to find a new career that allowed me to use the concrete knowledge I had gained but what about the underlying skills?
I realized that I had this valuable toolbox of soft and transferable skills that could be applied to SO many different jobs! I sat down and made a list of general skills I used as an occupational therapist. It looked a little like this:
- Communication
- Empathy
- Flexibility
- Collaboration
- Critical thinking
- Organization
- Attention to detail
- Problem solving
- Creativity
When that finally clicked for me, I saw that I did have an invaluable set of skills, I just needed to reframe the way I was thinking about them.
Finding a job with growing demand
The next roadblock was that I wanted a career in a field that wasn’t likely to go away. What I mean by that is: I saw the way the occupational therapy profession was moving, with insurance companies cutting therapy minutes in order to cut costs, other disciplines encroaching on what we saw as “our domain”, and the constant devaluation of occupational therapists as, “oh they’re just like physical therapists but they work on the upper body!”
I wanted a job in a field that’s here to stay.
But in addition to that, I didn’t want to try to get into a field that was overly saturated. I considered UX design for a long time but wasn’t prepared to really try to make it in what I saw as an increasingly competitive career. That’s not to say that UX design isn’t a fantastic possibility for healthcare professionals looking to make a change, just that it wasn’t for me.
Enter: data analytics.
About 15 months ago, I started on my journey to data analytics. With data becoming increasingly available at expeditious rates, I felt confident that data analytics would continue to be necessary (as an aside, I continue to feel this way, despite recent advancements in AI). When I looked at job prospects, I found that there were tons of entry-level data analyst opportunities.
I was sold.
Keeping what satisfied me
Despite how it may appear, there were parts of my job that I genuinely enjoyed. There was, after all, a reason that I got into occupational therapy in the first place. I wanted to make sure I didn’t lose sight of those things in my desire to shift careers.
Staying true to form, I made a list of the things I did enjoy:
- Helping people
- Creatively thinking about problems
- Solving puzzles
- Learning everything I could about specific topics
I used that list as a measure against potential new careers.
And it helped! When I discovered data analytics and started considering it as a possible career, I went back to my list…
Do data analysts help people? Definitely. We provide answers to stakeholders and help drive business decisions.
Can data analysts think creatively about problems? Most assuredly; datasets can be messy, requests can be unclear, and visualizations don’t always work the way you need them to.
What about solving puzzles? Certainly! Data analysis is entirely about solving puzzles, coming up with meaningful insights, and helping clear the way for better business decisions.
Can data analysts learn a lot about a specific topic? It’s almost required — data analysts need to be experts in certain tools and skills but they also can become experts in their domain, the industry they work in, or entire parts of the data lifecycle.
It seemed like a match made in heaven.
Searching for balance
On top of everything else, I decided I wasn’t going to leave OT unless I could find a career that offered me a better work-life balance. I was determined that there was no way I would leave one job with little flexibility just to find myself in the same situation.
The devil you know and all that jazz.
In addition to location flexibility, I also wanted a job that allowed for better balance throughout the workday. Occupational therapists are often required to meet absurd productivity demands or only get paid for the amount of time they’re face-to-face with a patient.
Imagine being told you only have 6 minutes per hour to do literally everything else your job requires except for face-to-face interactions with clients or stakeholders, or that if a client cancels, it comes out of your paycheck. It’s exhausting and sets you up for failure.
Luckily, data analytics fit the bill here, too. I looked at tons of job postings and many of them were offering hybrid or remote work. Plenty of data analysts whom I was following on LinkedIn mentioned their schedule flexibility so I felt confident that I could find the same.
Discovering countless opportunities for growth
The more I researched data analytics (read: watched TikTok videos, read multiple “A Day in the Life of…”, followed data analysts on LinkedIn), the more I was certain that this was it.
But before I really went whole-hog, I wanted to make sure that data analytics had something that occupational therapy did not: room for growth.
One of my biggest complaints about occupational therapy was (and is) that there just wasn’t space to grow. Unless you wanted to become a Director of Rehab or open your own practice, you were either an OT or a senior OT. That was basically it.
Luckily for me, there are tons of opportunities for growth in the data field! I could become a data analyst or a business intelligence analyst. I could advance my skills and become a data scientist or engineer. I could become an expert in database architecture. I could move into management and lead a team of analysts. Heck, I could shoot for the stars and become a Chief Data Officer!
The room for growth is seemingly endless.
Meeting my match
And so here I am, nine years later, a little older and much more self-reflective.
I’m in a job I love, with great work-life balance and flexibility in my work day. I solve puzzles and answer questions all day long. I get to be creative, empathetic, and collaborative. I can firmly say that I made the right choice.
But why am I telling this story? Because there’s seemingly a mass exodus of healthcare professionals in the United States and my story isn’t unique.
Doctors, nurses, PTs, OTs, SLPs, and more are getting burnt out by high demands and low flexibility. They’re experiencing not just a bad work-life balance, but no work-life balance. Regulations continue to get more stringent and the red tape keeps piling up.
This is all to say: if you’re one of those people who are burnt out, feeling unfulfilled, and ready to leave, don’t be me. Don’t wait for 8 years, continuously thinking, “well maybe this population is a better fit,” or, “this setting could be the one!”
Start making your own plan. Think about your own soft skills, the things you do like about your job, what your requirements are for your future career, and discover what else is out there.
Who knows, maybe data analytics is right for you, too.
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