Average read time: 8 min
I started out my occupational therapy (OT) clinical career bright and ready to take on the world. I reckoned this was it—I’ve gone through 20+ years of schooling and I’ve finally reached my final career destination.
Boy, was I so wrong.
Although some of the most gratifying moments I’ve ever had have come from working with patients, being a clinician never felt right, no matter how much I forced or romanticized it.
Over the past few years, I’ve taken bold strides to find—or oftentimes, create—opportunities that feel more aligned with my ideal career. My quest to leave the clinic didn’t happen overnight. Even though I took two steps forward and one step back for a long time, I never stopped working toward my ultimate goal.
All my hard work, grit, and trust in myself led me to where I am today, a full-time patient engagement content manager working for a healthcare digital platform and education company. I graduated with my Master’s degree in Occupational Therapy 10 years ago, and I am proud of where I am today—the most satisfied and fulfilled in my career to date.
In this article, I share 3 telltale signs that denote being a full-time clinician may not be the best fit for you (and that's ok!). At the end of this article, I share journal prompts that relate to each of the signs to help you honestly process where you're at with patient care.
If you're interested in a career outside of patient care (part-time or full-time), this article is for you.
The 3 Telltale Signs
Feeling nudged in the non-clinical direction often comes with variations of one or more of the following signs:
Even in the best-case scenario, you dread working with patients.
You try romanticizing your job, but it doesn’t resolve the dread.
You get excited about developing other skills and interests that would lead to a different career.
But before we go into each sign, let's look at how the stigma around leaving patient care plays a role in staying stuck in what I call the Reactive Career Cycle.
The Reactive Career Cycle
These signs often fly under the radar. This is because you’ve probably grown accustomed to their small yet potent presence; ergo, it’s become normal to sweep them under the rug when they arise.
It’s become normal to shut them down before they bloom, even though they are gradually chipping away at your morale.
You may get backlash when confiding these feelings to others, especially other clinicians. You may hear questions and comments like, “But you won’t treat patients anymore?” and “Well, I could never imagine leaving patient care” and the world-renowned “Then why did you go to grad school if you didn’t want to treat patients?” all brought to you with repulsed judgment.
In this case, you may feel embarrassed about sharing your vulnerable feelings. Others have pushed their limiting career beliefs onto you, coaxing you into an outfit of guilt.
You convince yourself that you still want this life. After all, you’ve invested so much time and money into your education that it would be a waste to “throw” it away. This sunken cost is a cost you tell yourself you must keep paying. Patient care is demanding on all fronts no matter what, so you muster up all the tough-love sentiments; suck it up, that’s the way it is, etc., etc.
You give into this counteract voice and enter the Reactive Career Cycle, which is defined as: "sticking something out for the sake of sticking something out and not having any true accountability over your career path."
You are not at the helm—you’ve let others take over the helm. Over time, your resentment and regret proliferate.
You live your weekdays dreaming for the weekend and your weekends dreading the week. Burnout sets in naturally, as you’ve become exhausted and cynical and endure a low sense of accomplishment.
This is exactly what happened to me. On the outside, I convinced everyone, including myself, that I was happy and my career was everything I wanted it to be. You can be both burned out and alright. That’s why all of this can be so insidious—what's in plain sight can sometimes be hard to see.
1. Even in the best-case scenario, you dread working with patients.
This sign is the most obvious one. It is the assignment.
Caring for patients is an art and a science, a skill set that takes time to establish. You can hone that skill set and become the best clinician you can be, all the while feeling that pit of dread anchored in your gut.
Some indicators that working for patients may not be best suited for you are:
You rejoice at every cancellation, even from your favorite patients/cases
You’d rather hide and pretend to be busy than treat patients
You have to go to great lengths to “play the part” of a clinician
The awkwardness of being a clinician has never gone away
You feel stuck in patient care
Let’s make one thing clear though---Dreading working with patients is different from not wanting to do your best and be your best for your patients.
Dread is not synonymous with negligence. Patients can bring you profound joy and make you feel good about what you’re doing. You can live simultaneously with the dread and still be a giving, caring, competent, and hell, an engaged clinician.
In my case, I coped with the dread of being over-engaged. I was so enmeshed with my patients and my work that I had a hard time unplugging.
I subconsciously overcompensated for the fact that I was a foreigner in my own career by being more emotionally attached to my patients and my job. As I saw my coworkers and former classmates take pride in their careers, I couldn’t help but extrapolate that I could never and would never be on that level. I felt like a fraud.
It’s common to doubt the validity of these dreadful feelings and chalk them up to external factors, such as a poor person-job fit. You think— “Maybe if I had a better job, I’d be happier and actually be OK treating patients.” And sometimes, that could very well be the case.
Depending on how long you’ve been in the game, you may have a handful of jobs under your belt already. I’ve had disastrous chaotic jobs and cushy dream jobs as a clinician (not cushy in the corporate sense, cushy in the healthcare sense; IYKYK).
While I improved at playing the game and felt more deserving of being in the game, I knew I was in the wrong game altogether. I knew it as a grad student, but I didn’t trust the feeling until a few years in.
2. You try romanticizing your job, but it doesn’t resolve the dread.
Romanticizing your life has an alluring appeal to it—who wouldn’t want to do this?
Especially when it comes to the mundane acts of daily living, romanticizing your life is a mindfulness approach combined with an intentional act of adding a dose of delight to the task at hand, no matter how trivial or serious (or preferred or non-preferred) it may be.
It’s about what you do and how you do it.
In one of my more recent clinical jobs, I embodied a romanticized life in and out of the clinic. I wore cute scrub sets that all the healthcare influencers were prancing around in, dug deep into academic journals, and laminated new activities like there was no tomorrow.
In addition to never having a shortage of creative treatment ideas, I romanticized rolling up my sleeves and being the best clinician version of myself I could be. I even romanticized typing up evals and finishing my notes at home every night wrapped in a cozy blanket with ambient lighting, an instrumentals Spotify playlist, and a candle burning.
All the other checkboxes were in place: amazing clinic, positive work environment, wonderful patients and families, a half-hour of paid doc time every day—all that you could ever ask for in a pediatric OT job. And yet, I knew in my heart of hearts that despite how amazing this situation was, I was not meant for it.
3. You get excited about developing other skills and interests that would lead to a different career.
We are multi-faceted humans with many passions, interests, and ideas. Several career paths can be appealing, even if you're happy in your current career. I chose a career in healthcare because it was my strongest interest and the path of least resistance for me at the time.
I have always loved writing, but I also knew that I had no interest in becoming a journalist or author. When I fell out of love (to be fair, I was never truly in love) with being a clinician, I would often think “If I can’t even do my own career right, what else could I do?”
ENTER MY ENTREPRENEURIAL ERA
When I filed for my LLC in 2017, I was working per-diem in the clinic and was an adjunct professor at my alma mater OT school. I had the safety net of steady income to take risks of building a business and a name for myself from scratch.
I became many things:
I became a researcher. I studied job burnout via academic journals, regularly polling my growing audience through my podcast at the time and social media channels, and began an IRB-approved research study with an industrial/organizational psychology team at Colorado State University (as of the writing of this blog post, we are working on our manuscript and preparing to share our findings at an upcoming conference and get published in a journal).
I became an educator. I wanted to relay the findings of the latest research to clinicians and deliver them in a digestible way. I began creating courses and presentations to tie the theoretical and practical applications of job burnout to clinicians via online and in-person CE courses. I started a podcast where I interviewed experts in various wellness fields and clinicians like myself to package a well-rounded show with education and relatable experiences for my listeners. I also created fun campaigns and content themes on Instagram and grew an engaged audience.
I became a writer. My co-written article on fieldwork burnout was published in OT Practice. I set out to write a self-help book and self-publish it. Over 53,000 words into the book my dream and mission for all things related to my business came to an end. In 2021 I realized that I no longer wanted to go down this path of being the burnout expert. Nevertheless, how many people can say they wrote 53,000 words?
The point in my sharing this is that I had to build my own momentum and get out of the Reactive Career Cycle and into a Proactive Career Cycle. I wasn’t going to wait for anyone to hand it to me.
Being scrappy and obsessed with my business led me to fail quickly and often, and I learned to pick myself right back up. I had ✨no✨ idea what I was doing.
I learned so much about myself—what I thought I wanted but didn’t end up wanting and vice versa.
Even though the LLC lasted only a few years, it served a purpose. I couldn’t have gotten to where I am today if I hadn’t had my entrepreneurial experimentation period. I was grateful for the journey, and my heart knew it was time to move on.
In 2021, I was actually thinking about getting a Ph.D. (I love school), but then I got wind of a content manager job that was right up my alley. That is my current full-time job today. <3
JOURNAL PROMPTS
Carve out some time to cozy up with your favorite blanket, coffee or tea, and favorite notebook and pen. Write down these prompts and answer them freely, without censoring yourself.
Even in the best-case scenario, you dread working with patients: Where do you feel "the dread?" How often do you feel it? Are there any patterns around it? Is it more than not liking certain aspects of your job? What is this dread trying to show you? Do continuing education and professional development opportunities excite you or fill you up with more dread?
You try romanticizing your job, but it doesn’t resolve the dread: Have you tried to romanticize your job and other tactics but to no avail? What has worked and what hasn't worked? Does this feel like a cheap, short-term Band-Aid fix or does it feel sustainable?
You get excited about developing other skills and interests that would lead to a different career: Are there skills that you are interested in learning or sharpening that you can use to catapult yourself into a new career? Do you have interests that you can start doing work around, whether it’s finding freelance gigs or volunteer work? What strengths do you have that you can translate from patient care into another career?
If you are truly considering a career change, then I cannot speak highly enough of the Non-Clinical 101 Course from The Non-Clinical PT.
Specifically created and designed for rehab professionals such as OTs, PTs, and SLPs, this course thoroughly guides you step-by-step on how to make a successful transition to roles outside of the clinic where leveraging your clinical background is advantageous.
The course includes A-Z training from tailoring your resume to job searching and tons more. The lessons in each section of the course are GOLD.
I cannot attribute my success in landing a dream job as a content strategist and program manager enough to the lessons and real application I took away from this course.
If you know patient care is not right for you and you're ready to pivot your career, now is the time to do so. If this feels scary to you, good! That means that this is important to you. My biggest motto is: do it scared.
Click on the 20% off link below in the banner below to enroll in the course now!
I am a proud affiliate for this course, and I do receive a cut from course sign-ups when you use my link. <3