“You can apply for a job, but you cannot
apply for a career.”
A job is a
specific occupational position within a business or organisation. When we
complete medical school, doctors are taught that our career means pursuing a
post-graduation. Is it so?
Let’s take
a simple example of a vocational career like teaching. We want the people who
are teaching our children to think of it as a career, not just a job. We want
them to have an interest in our children and care about the success of our
children.
Same
applies to us as doctors! The patient assesses the technical quality of medical
care indirectly by evidence of the interest and concern of professionals with
their health and wellbeing. Such evidence is perceived through empathy. To
achieve this, we need to love our jobs.
Jobs can
help people start careers in many ways – experience, knowledge, learning about
what they like and dislike. Eventually though, striving for a career is
a very positive step because it means you want more out of the work you do than
a paycheck.
I can share
my own journey of a job to career. When I worked as an ENT Surgeon dealing with
deaf children, I knew to perform surgeries to improve their hearing. I was one
of the few surgeons in the country performing the cochlear implant surgery.
However, performing surgery was a job and I knew that outcome of the surgery
was dependent on post implantation habilitation. There was a dearth of
well-trained habilitationists. I needed to strengthen my team and improve my
surgical outcomes. This started the journey of my career.
First, I
went for further training in cochlear implantation by the best surgeons in the
world. I learnt performing cochlear implantation in anomalous cochlea by the
surgeon who gave the classification of vestibular cochlear malformation to us.
It was a lifetime experience to see his involvement with the deaf children and
the outcomes of his implantees.
Next step
was to strengthen the habilitation of my implantees and lead a strong team. We
not only trained our staff but I did a deaf educator course and certificate
course in early intervention in children with disabilities.
As I went
looking for options to upgrade my skills, I realised they were unlimited. I
completed various courses on Edx and Coursera platforms ranging from “Medical
ethics” to “how to become a resilient person”. I am pleased to inform that many
of these courses are free. I am now a mentor for Coursera and would recommend everyone
reading this article to take at least one course.
Whether a
job or career is the right fit for you will depend on your stage of life. Jobs
can help people start careers in many ways – experience, knowledge, learning about
what they like and dislike. In addition, earning potential is much higher in a
career than in a job in most cases.
There is a
lot of unrest amongst doctors these days. Doctors are stuck between good
medical practices and economics of getting that paycheck. I personally feel
that the balance can be struck if we develop our jobs into careers. Every
specialty has something to add to the quality of patient’s life than just
treating a disease.
So as you
can see, while one can work very hard at a job and even be paid well to work a
job, a career takes much more motivation and forward-thinking effort than a job
“A job is given to you, but a career is
made by you”
Dr Sheelu Srinivas
Consultant ENT and Cochlear Implant
Surgeon
Columbia Asia Hospitals, Sarjapur,
Bangalore
9902846770
