When I was 28, I developed a repetitive strain injury. For nearly a year I wore a brace on my wrist, and for months my husband had to cut up my food because I couldn’t apply the weight required to the knife.
That’s not the point of this story.
Desperate to find something to do that didn’t involve my wrist, I applied for numerous jobs, including one called a Clinical Audit Facilitator. I didn’t know what that was but it sounded like it required talking rather than typing. As a young musician my CV was pretty short but it did include leadership roles, which may have been why I was shortlisted.
Then the real work began. I had to give a presentation at my interview on clinical audit and quality in the British National Health Service, a subject on which I knew precisely nothing. For the week before the presentation, I read government white papers and anything I could find on quality assurance and total quality management (TQM). I prepared a presentation in which I showed how undertaking clinical audits and applying TQM to the health system could improve the performance of general practitioners.
That job interview changed my life.
Think about it: a young musician employed to teach GPs how to do clinical audit. You can bet that raised some eyebrows among the 464 GPs in the county. It was a hard slog till I gained the respect of the clinicians among whom I was working.
The point of this story?
Because of that interview, I have spent over 30 years working with clinicians, service managers, policy makers and government agencies to improve health systems and outcomes. I gained an MPhil and a PhD in public health. I have conducted research that has changed the ways services are delivered, and developed strategies to improve government-funded services for under-served populations. I have led initiatives to monitor and evaluate performance, have mentored a new generation of researchers, and served in governance and leadership roles.
I remain forever grateful to the manager who looked at the skill set of a young woman and saw possibility. My manager believed that someone able to teach and equip people to perform musically could use those skills to teach and equip people to perform in other sectors. She thought laterally, realising that skills can be transferred and that content knowledge can be acquired.
I’ve told this story multiple times over the years because to me it is an excellent example of thinking outside the box. Thank you, Jane Falk-Whynes, for taking a chance on me.
Who can you take a chance on today?