Are ex-doctors the new ex-lawyers?

Ex-lawyers tend to be great at building things. Why? Their entire profession is the study of how things break down. By studying the breakdown of relationships (both personal and business) they have a bird’s eye view for weak spots — things that could go awry down the track.

By watching things break down, ex-lawyers are accidentally really good at building things well in the first place. These skills are incredibly valuable in the early days of a company. It’s a rare thing to find a scale up or venture fund without some ex lawyers in the mix.

Medicos have their own unique skills, honed from years of practicing. The primary one is the ability to triage tasks quickly (and ruthlessly). If you’ve ever spent time observing an emergency department, it’s incredible to see the order amongst seeming chaos. New patients coming in, going out, some at risk, some just needing to sober up, and the staff with minimum resources and lives on the line. Medicos are wizards when it comes to triaging tasks.

I can’t claim this thought as my own, it was Jodie Auster who I heard frame the Doctor skillset this way. Jodie (GM Uber Eats APAC) is an ex doctor.

My background is Myotherapy, which exists in a similar space to Physio and Osteo. While I’m no doctor, similar processes exist across the health disciplines. The very first thing you do with a patient, before trying to build a relationship, is try to work out if they’re about to be dead. If your patient presents with a sore calf + the back of their knee is radiating heat + there’s no reason for them to have a sore leg + they have just been on a plane for 16 hours + they’re overweight and over 50, your training says to refer immediately, there’s a chance of deep vein thrombosis. You don’t give them a massage first or tell them to rest, you triage (refer) as quickly as possible.

It’s not hard to frame this as putting the customer first: regardless of whether it’s a popular choice. First things first, is this issue life threatening? Do I need to refer (delegate)? Can I do something meaningful in the small amount of time I have? What resources does this patient need so that they can continue improving after our time together concludes?

Taking information from people quickly, triaging, actioning and/or delegating (giving exercises or testing) has some very similar attributes to the famous Covey 7 Habits prioritisation charts.

Medical professionals are trained to do this, over and over again. They also tend to be fast learners, with incredible comprehension skills.

Demand for Doctors in Tech
Already the demand for doctors in the tech industry is skyrocketing in the US. Albeit largely because of the proliferation of healthtech that requires the marriage of physicians and technology services.

In a piece called ‘Silicon Valley wants to hire doctors’, Beth Kutscher, (managing editor at Linkedin) wrote -

The lure for physicians is strong. At a time when burnout rates are increasing, these new opportunities — whether they’re full-time or consultant roles — offer the chance for higher compensation and the chance to hone new skills. Many doctors are also passionate about attempting to fix what they see as the failings in the U.S. health system: high cost, inefficiency, waste, poor patient experience and medical errors.

On a personal note, this is 100% congruent with my journey from private practice to tech. After 10 years trying to solve the same problems, 1:1, ad nauseam. The opportunity to contribute something at scale , to solve these issues, was worth the risk of abandoning a great lifestyle job.

Overcoming the sunk-cost fallacy.

When it comes to attracting talent from other industries, it pays to understand just how hard it can be to emotionally process leaving ‘all that behind’. There is an understandable hesitancy to abandon an expensive and time consuming education for new frontiers. While law, finance and engineering all have a well trodden path into start ups — medicos are somewhat under-represented.

Jackie Rabec, a medical doctor who completed her MBA and now works in a scale up, put it succinctly: “I do not think Doctors struggle with entrepreneurship, it is more that they may not be aware of it as a direction they can take, and embrace.”

“Many traditional paths in medicine have clear decision trees where the individual has a fairly good idea of what the outcome/ timeframe/ risk will be once they decide to pursue a specific path. These decisions are incrementally made and linear.”

(ref: Jackie’s interview for Doctology)

Emily Casey, a self professed ‘MD Defector’, shared a similar sentiment with me. “…there is great fear of getting off of the treadmill (or that safe linear pathway) and getting left behind (competitive training programs, explaining gaps in resumes etc). As well as large cultural pressure — when I wanted to leave, albeit I was not a fully qualified doctor, everyone told me I was crazy and pressured me not to. There is a cultural stigma that “if you leave you failed and just weren’t tough enough”.

“Medicine is all-consuming and becomes your whole life, including your identity. To step back from that can be terrifying and isolating, and why we need more support, awareness and channels to help people in doing this…”

To solve for this, there are groups like Creative Careers in Medicine that encourage this transition — to lend bravery and community to Doctors to pursue their passions, within and without medicine. There’s also the Startmate Fellowship (which Jackie completed) — supporting professionals from all walks of life to dip their toe in early stage companies. Meanwhile Emily Casey has launched What the Health — a resource to help the health-tech curious build confidence in the space.

It takes a village
Medical professionals know so much, in a field where the general population knows so little about their bodies. Like any environment equalising, we’ll see more and more medical knowledge instilled into technology, and welcome more and more health professionals out of hospitals, and into the technology sector. Whether health tech or not, their intelligence and triaging instincts will make a great addition to any business.

It’s not just about medicine either. For every industry, there are transferable skills — and tremendous upside — to leaving behind what isn’t working — and embracing something new. From founders to venture funds, we’d do well to welcome diverse industries into the fold, not just from law and finance.