Career options for clinicians outside the NHS — Johanna Frost

At BiteLabs, we empower healthcare professionals to develop the skills required to build impactful healthtech products. We have been profiling some of the healthcare staff who have successfully transitioned into roles outside of clinical practice. Be sure to have a look at other articles on Dr. Anyaegbuna and Mr. Scott’s motivations and path to healthtech if you have not already. In this article, we will be summarising the key parts from the interview with Ms. Johanna Frost, an ex-physiotherapist and current product manager at a healthtech company.

(Note that the contents of the interview have been slightly edited to improve readability without losing key information)

What does your current role entail?

I am currently working as a product manager, where some (amongst many others) of my key tasks involve:

Understanding and representing user needs
Aligning different stakeholders
Prioritising product features to go into product development

Many of these tasks involve communicating with many individuals with varied roles and responsibilities.

What are some other roles you have taken before this one?

Before my current role as a product manager, I had served as a:

Business consultant
Product owner
Physiotherapist with additional developmental and educational responsibilities.

All of the roles have been similar in that I have been the bridge between users (healthcare professionals and/or patients) and the system, or the developers of the system.

How and why did you get into your current role?

There were a lot of advancements and changes in the digital health space around the same time I started working as a physiotherapist in primary care, and I was interested in exploring that. In addition to the advancements in the digital health space, a career in healthtech seemed exciting, attracting me to it. In addition to these ‘pull-factors’ to healthtech there were 3 ‘push-factors’ which involved me feeling limited in my previous role, or larger limitations within the NHS:

Lack of flexibility: In primary care, the days are heavily structured by time and meetings with patients
Long waiting time for patients: Patients often wait for many weeks before they get an appointment with me or my colleagues
Lack of fulfilment in my previous role: Some of my work was rather repetitive and not all the consultation required a face-to-face session (in my opinion)
Lack of user-friendly systems

So I wanted (and still want to) be part of changing these things for the better, and pivot my working life to around goals I find more fulfilling.

How is product management related to medicine/nursing/pharmacy etc?

First key skill to highlight is communication. Having worked as a physiotherapist for a few years, I realised the importance of communication, and not just strengthening knowledge and honing competency. It is important to understand a patient’s expectations, problems, concerns, and goals (among others). While these are key parts of communication with a patient in the healthcare setting, these are also applicable in product management when understanding a user’s (and other stakeholders’) expectations, problems, concerns, and goals (among others).

Secondly, prioritisation is a fundamental skill in both healthcare and product management. This can be illustrated with the following examples:

In my capacity as a physiotherapist, when working with a patient that has to treat their back pain while juggling their career, family and other commitments, I’d work with them to prioritise the most important intervention.
As a product manager, I work with my team to prioritise the most important feature that needs to be done this upcoming sprint.

In both roles, prioritisation then ties back neatly with communication where I have to understand my patient’s (in healthcare), and the stakeholders’ problems and perspectives.

How do enjoyment and work life balance compare to your clinical career?

I have greater flexibility in deciding how, when, and where I want to work. I am no longer tied to specific times as I was in my clinical role. With this, I enjoy more time with my colleagues, which helps in building long-term relationships, which is meaningful for me. Overall, transitioning from healthcare to healthtech has helped me enjoy my work days more, with a better work-life balance.

How could someone go about getting into your field?

Here are 2 main ways how I got started:

I researched companies that interested me. If they were inviting applications to the product management team, I would reach out to enquire about opportunities for a junior role.
I applied to young professional programmes, which are targeted for individuals earlier in their career.

The latter was my way into the healthtech world. After getting hired, I was able to change into the specific role I was most interested in.

What can I earn?

I’ve been hired in both Sweden and in Great Britain. In Sweden, the salary for a Product manager can be somewhere around 35k to 52k SEK (and rising with experience). Compared to being a physiotherapist, the salary is an average of 27k SEK with a slow increase with experience.

Anything else you’d like to add?

My career transition involved both hard work and luck. They have also given my many different experiences in the different roles I have taken. I’ve applied to jobs, been headhunted, and I’ve even gone through a bankruptcy with one company. Taking the risk to transition out of healthcare, it was reassuring to know that I always have an education in healthcare to fall back on if needed. I really want to highlight this: TRY. As daunting as it may be, put in applications, and make the effort to connect with individuals, if you are really serious about getting into healthtech. If you really want to change your career, you will probably succeed in one way or the other.

We hope Ms. Frost’s journey from a physiotherapist to a product manager, and her tips come in useful to find your own way to your dream career. If you’re a clinician (current or former) doing something interesting outside of a traditional career — please get in touch! We’d love to feature you in our next blog article.

If you’re looking to start your journey in healthtech, visit bitelabs.io to check out how you can join our next cohort.