It’s never too early – or too late – to create a career that’s your own. It’s always the right time to keep the door open to learning, to try your best, and to allow yourself to grow through experience and time.

Over the last four decades of my career, I’ve learned a lot. And now, as I’m about to retire, I find myself reflecting. I’ve been a pediatrician and started and ran my own clinic, getting to play with and care for kids every day. I’ve been a CMIO and implemented new technologies to provide higher-quality care and patient experience. At the national level, I got to be the chairperson of the HIMSS physician group, meeting people and learning a lot from them. Collaborating with my CMIO peers taught me so much about my career and myself.

I’ve had quite a run. And while I feel incredibly lucky to have experienced what I have, it didn’t all happen because I was the smartest or the best at everything. Being mentored by those around me made all the difference. Through it all, there are three pieces of advice I’ve received and learned through the years that stand out, and I’d like to share them with you here: Listen. Follow your passion. Be a servant leader.

Listen

Listening is one of the best things you can do, especially when you approach it with the intent to understand – understand what’s going on with the patient, a situation, or a colleague – rather than going in with an agenda.

If you’re a doctor, listen to your nurses. Heed what they say, and they will teach you so much.

If you’re a care provider, listen to your patients or your patients’ parents. They’ll tell you exactly what’s going on and, sometimes even, how to treat it. No one knows the patient better than themselves or their parents, so it’s our job to really hear what they’re telling us.

If you’re a leader or a supervisor, listen to your employees. In times of change or conflict, sometimes all that’s needed is to make someone else feel heard.

If you work with vendors, analysts, or other outside partners, listen to them. Some of the best relationships I’ve had with vendors were ones where we took the time to get to know each other. It wasn’t just sales. We worked to figure out how to help each other and look for ways to make a difference.

Many of our jobs in health care are to deal with people at times in their lives when they may not be their best. Listening to build mutual trust and understanding can make the difference between a transactional exchange and a rich, insightful relationship.

Follow your passion

Is your career fueled by what you love, driven by the reason you got into your field in the first place?

If it’s not, find a way to change that, and success will follow.

I started my career in pediatrics because I knew I loved working with kids early on. After three decades of building a loved pediatrics practice, I felt I had fulfilled that dream. When the opportunity struck, I decided to pursue another passion in data and manage the clinical integration and maintenance of an enterprise-wide EMR system.

If you find yourself stalling out and wanting to do something else, take steps to explore what that could mean. Learn from others, find out where the need is and figure out how you could apply your skills, experience, and knowledge.

We all have gifts. We all have uniqueness. We all have something we want to accomplish. That is where success lies.

Be a servant leader

Having confidence in your abilities is important; knowing something can always be done better – and then working towards it with the help of others – will help you continuously improve your skills and benefit others at the same time.

When I was in pediatrics, I asked to learn how to do circumcisions. Then each time I did one, I tried to do it better than the last. Each time I became more efficient and improved the surgical outcomes for the patient. In IT, I constantly was looking for a better solution or workflow to improve provider and patient care. Always asking how to help others gave me such pleasure and success.

It’s a mentality that trickles into other areas too. When there’s an issue or a challenge, the only way to truly solve it is to go to the root source and understand where, why, and how it’s happening. Engaging others to help solve problems brings about a collective mindset. It can be prevented for others, and our care or service gets better.

Leading by serving fulfills a deep-seated need in all of us to do good to others.

A career for the future

No matter your role or seniority, whether you’re interacting with patients or supporting the backend systems that make modern care possible, what you do is important. And building a career that you can look back on and be proud of is important. It’s the everyday opportunities and actions that build a memorable life. What will you do today that’ll make a positive difference for you, those around you, and the future?

David Danhauer is a pediatrician and former CMIO. 

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