Beyond the Bedside: Doctors and Nurses Forge Career Paths in Unexpected Places

Getting a medical or nursing degree opens many doors — and not just in hospitals and outpatient clinics.

Doctor and nurses frequently hear that they’re in high demand, but the need stretches far beyond patient care. Their expertise is required to test new drugs, design health promotion campaigns, and develop technology platforms that will offer new ways to connect patients with their healthcare providers.

And that’s just the beginning.

While taking care of individual patients is certainly rewarding, many clinicians believe they can have the greatest impact in a corporate or consulting role, where their efforts could potentially impact millions.

That’s why the clinicians and research scientists below say that they’ve swapped their scrubs and lab coats for button-downs and blazers. And while the transition can be bumpy, many of the skills they learned as clinicians translate well to the corporate world.

This year's crop of LinkedIn Top Companies in the U.S. is adept at attracting talent, and employees come from a range of backgrounds. Doctors, nurses and scientists are bringing their expertise to consumer technology, software, consulting and financial services firms — sometimes in unexpected roles.

The tropical disease specialist who makes sure data is healthy

Dr. Summerpal Kahlon, Director of Care Innovation at Oracle

Healthcare providers have long relied on the results of large-scale clinical trials to make decisions about patient care.

But a number of technology companies are looking at new ways of analyzing data through machine learning. For instance, what does the data from thousands of intensive-care patients tell you about the ideal time to remove a ventilator? And can information from a wearable activity tracker predict when someone has an increased risk of a heart attack?

With so much data now available through electronic health records, the ability to mine that information to make clinical decisions could be a game-changer.

At the same time, doctors need to be able to trust that the conclusions are accurate and verifiable.

“Doctors are often accused of being technophobes or luddites,” said Dr. Summerpal Kahlon, an infectious disease specialist who’s the director of care innovation at Oracle, which like all the companies mentioned here is one of this year’s LinkedIn Top Companies. “The reality is they’re not. Physicians are hyper-critical of new research because they’re going to make decisions based on that.”

At Oracle, part of Kahlon’s role is making sure that the company is collecting the right data to reach the appropriate conclusions. One of the projects he worked on, for instance, focused on using data streamed from a diabetic patient’s glucose monitor to construct individual care plans.

“It’s one of those things where when you look at the finished product, it looks incredibly simplistic,” he said. “That’s sort of the beauty of it. But unless we can do it right and scale, we’re not going to get there. Ultimately you want these sorts of projects to be accurate and reproducible.”

Kahlon, who is based in Central Florida, studied tropical diseases while doing an infectious disease fellowship after residency. He continues to see patients one morning a week at the Veterans Administration in Orlando.

“Healthcare is constantly changing,” he said. “You can easily get caught up and distracted by what you perceive to be the reality of the system. For me, [practicing medicine] does help me stay grounded in the reality of what happens.”

Making the move from medical helicopters to financial dashboards

Danna Campbell, Specialist leader, Deloitte

The way doctors and hospitals get paid is fundamentally changing. Where they used to earn fees based on the amount of care they provided, they’re now increasingly moving to a system where they get a set amount per patient, and share in the savings if they can provide more cost-effective care.

And as healthcare providers prepare to upend their business, a number of consulting firms are working behind the scenes to help build complex financial models and track performance.

Nurses and doctors are embedded in these firms; their projects range from implementing electronic medical records to helping hospitals save on their pharmacy costs.

“I totally understand the physicians’ and nurses’ and administrators’ frustrations,” said Danna Campbell, a Houston-based specialist leader at Deloitte, which is headquartered in New York. “These regulations get in the way, and it decreases their productivity. They can’t spend as much time with the patient as they want.”

Before Campbell made the move into consulting, she was an emergency medicine nurse in Toronto, flying out by helicopter to pick up trauma patients. She then moved to Houston, where she worked on a project helping a hospital build its dialysis and transplant program.

That’s when she decided she needed an MBA. She still planned to return to a hospital setting until she was recruited by Ernst & Young (now EY).

“I didn’t know that there was any other opportunity for nurses out there beyond getting your master’s and moving up the ladder in administration,” she said.

Now she gets calls from other nurses who are excited to learn that there are positions for them in fields like consulting. “There are so many opportunities out there for nurses that didn’t exist before,” she said.

Although her understanding of the clinical picture helps her relate to clients, it required a mental shift at first. “It took me a while to make the transition from thinking more clinical to thinking more financial,” Campbell said. “Now it’s easy for me.”

An insider view of healthcare with a global perspective

Dr. Alice Zheng, Associate consultant, McKinsey

There are many factors that go into the country’s rising healthcare costs, but one issue being closely studied is unnecessary medical care. In 2011, the Institute of Medicine estimated that $210 billion had been spent on unnecessary tests and procedures in a single year, accounting for 27% of all healthcare spending.

Medical overuse is one of a number of projects that Dr. Alice Zheng has worked on as an associate consultant at McKinsey. Her client, a medical benefits manager, was working with insurance companies to help them tackle the problem of overutilization. Zheng led the interviews that were part of the analysis.

“I have an insider’s perspective on how decisions are made for tests and treatments that allows me to ask the right questions regarding clinical decision-making,” she said in an email. “I understand broad disease categories and treatment types (and a ton of acronyms) that informed the number crunching; for example, what type of treatment is considered medical oncology versus radiation oncology?”

Before pursuing her medical degree, Zheng completed a master’s in public health. Her interests in maternal health and global health led her to Uganda and then China. “My experiences at a variety of global health nonprofits — both grassroots and large multilateral organizations — convinced me there is a lot that nonprofits can learn from the private sector,” she said. “Once I started medical school, I began auditing classes at the business school and looking for ways business and global health intersect.”

She decided to pursue an MBA at Harvard Business School, and interned at McKinsey in San Francisco. But she still planned to become an Ob/Gyn, and after graduation, she continued her clinical training as an intern at a New York City hospital. Ultimately, she realized she couldn’t do both and decided consulting provided the greatest breadth of opportunities.

For clinicians considering a similar path, she encourages them to think about what it would mean to trade hospital rounds for Excel analytics.

“If one is considering consulting long-term, I would ask: if you never saw another patient in a clinical context, how would you feel about that?” she said. “Many clinicians are able to see patients during the first few years or longer, but to stay in the field long-term, it would be difficult to stay clinically active.”

The scientist who wants to help you sleep better

Conor Heneghan, Lead research scientist, Fitbit

One of the most intriguing opportunities in the digital health space is wearable technology, or the ability for consumers to monitor their own health through a simple device, like a fitness tracker.

At its best, that device could stream data into a medical record, creating a starting point for discussion between doctors and patients or even raising an alert when the readouts look worrisome.

Fitbit, one of the best-known companies in this space, has been increasing the functionality of its humble step counters, allowing users to track not only their overall mileage but now their heart rate and sleep patterns.

The scientist leading the effort on the sleep front is Conor Heneghan, who has a background in engineering but spent the early part of his career in clinical settings. At the New York Eye & Ear Infirmary, for instance, he worked on developing telemedicine technologies to allow doctors to perform eye exams remotely, for example.

His research has focused on finding the signals that can predict larger problems: for instance, screening for sleep apnea using an electrocardiogram. He’s also looked at whether radio waves could be used to measure sleep patterns, a contactless alternative to the current cumbersome sleep monitors. 

With his patented technology, he started a company called BiancaMed, ultimately selling the firm to ResMed, a major player making products for sleep disorders.

In March, Fitbit launched its new sleep tracking feature on the Alta HR device. Heneghan, who joined the San Francisco-based company two years ago, helped inform the product design as well as the insights that help people understand their results.

The work drew on his prior research on predictive signals. For instance, someone in deep sleep will have a very regular heart rate while someone in REM sleep will have much higher heart rate variability.

People who aren’t getting quality sleep will receive information about the impact of caffeine, alcohol and other factors that could be disrupting their slumber.

“A lot of that is common sense advice about sleep hygiene,” Heneghan said. “But most people don’t know that information.”

A product evangelist who speaks the same language

Lori Quigley, Vice president, marketing and education services, Stryker Orthopedics

When medical device company Stryker acquired Mako Surgical almost four years ago in a $1.65 billion deal, it was making a big bet on its flagship robotic arm for joint replacements. This year the Kalamazoo, Mich.-based company is making its commercial debut in the total knee replacement space after receiving regulatory approval in 2013.

As with any product launch, surgeons, hospital administrators, patients and health insurers have to understand the product’s benefits despite its high price tag.

At Stryker, that role of evangelism falls to Lori Quigley, a former surgical intensive care nurse who now leads the company’s medical and education services for its joint replacement division.

She oversees the effort to educate surgeons about the product in addition to handling public relations, digital marketing and outreach around conferences. Her clinical background is crucial. “I’ve found that my ability to understand their perspective and what they deal with in their jobs allows me to quickly gain credibility and earn their trust,” she said.

Working as a nurse builds valuable skills that translate well to the corporate world, she added, including flexibility, empathy, the ability to communicate and calmness under pressure, whether it’s dealing with emotions or responding to an emergency.

Quigley worked as a nurse for three years before earning her master’s in public health administration. She always intended to return to a clinical role but other opportunities kept arising.

While in administration, she worked on a marketing campaign focused on total joint replacement. That experience ultimately led her to the corporate side, first at a smaller orthopedics company and now at Stryker.

“I tell nursing students all the time what a great profession nursing is,” she said. “Healthcare is so complex. First-hand experience working in a hospital and clinical setting helps nurses understand this environment better than many who have simply studied it in business school.”