Specializing has always been the traditional path to career progression because it opens many doors of opportunity. What is often not discussed, however, is that having a specialty has its own drawbacks. We healthcare workers (HCWs) witnessed this firsthand because of the COVID-19 crisis. During the pandemic, many specialty clinics barely had any patients because clients deferred procedures that were not related to COVID-19. In the case of allied health professionals, a lot of the therapy centers that specialized in early intervention (EI) struggled to survive due to the lack of business adaptability. Many are still barely keeping the lights on, and some have ceased operations entirely. You can’t progress in your career if you don’t have a job!
Much of it could’ve been avoided had we HCWs refused to support draconian measures that defied economic principles. Alas, instead of looking beyond our little world of health sciences for solutions, many HCWs demonized other professionals for clamoring for more balanced policies that considered the economic repercussions of nation- and region-wide lockdowns. “Economics lang ‘yan, mas importante ang health!”, cried many HCWs on social media.
But what discipline could’ve kept the therapy centers from going bankrupt? What could’ve kept the Philippines from losing therapists to high-income countries? What could’ve prevented, ages ago, the rise of the pseudo-therapists that are now preying upon patients because of the lack of licensed clinicians? Answer: ECONOMICS!!!
Yet not all therapists were idle at home, scraping by with their few teletherapy sessions. Some therapists’ careers remained relatively stable. Before I delve into this though, I admit that a lot of what I’ll present are findings about talent development from other disciplines, as well as anecdotal evidence and personal observations about how those findings played out in the world of allied health. Yet, these can be a starting point for reflecting on what it means to progress in one’s career. So who are those therapists whose jobs were stable during the pandemic? What can we learn from them about career progression?
A Major Win for Hospital-Based Practice and the Academe
During the COVID-19 crisis, many therapists who were fully employed at hospitals were still working daily and receiving their monthly income. I know this because I was a frontliner at two hospitals, although I worked in outpatient settings. In the rehabilitation medicine department of the day hospital where I worked, the physical therapists (PTs) were given other daily tasks such as triaging patients, contact tracing, and other administrative duties when the guidelines for the therapy sessions had not yet been released. They resumed providing therapy services and still kept their new job responsibilities when we were finally allowed to see patients.
In the private tertiary hospital where I’m still a clinician, the PTs helped out in processing our documents for our RT-PCR tests when they did not have sessions. According to them, the occupational therapists (OTs) and the speech-language pathologists (SLPs) of the rehab department were busy with in-patient care (I work at an outpatient specialty clinic in this same hospital).
Another group of therapists whose careers remained stable were the academicians. Those who were working full-time in allied health colleges still had plenty on their plate because the university classes and internship programs continued. The part-time lecturers, on the other hand, had something to fall back on when they could not conduct therapy sessions.
Many therapists working in these settings in other countries experienced the same, based on what I learned from the webinars of the Philippine Academy of Occupational Therapists (PAOT). The commonality among these allied health workers is that their skill sets were generally broader than those who were working in outpatient EI clinics. Some of the former were generalists, while some practiced their specialties as they utilized their broad skill set in their workplace.
Depth and Range
The experiences of the therapists who thrived during the pandemic confirm what David Epstein (author of “Range”) and Adam Grant (author of “Originals”) pointed out that the people who thrive the most during crises and the greatest achievers throughout history are not mere specialists. Rather they have a deep level of expertise in at least one domain, but also have a good grasp of many other disciplines which they cross-pollinate with each other and with their specialty. An example of this would be how Leonardo Da Vinci used his knowledge of anatomy and engineering to produce world-renowned paintings. Another example is Dr. Jose Rizal. He saw the Philippines as a patient suffering from cancer because he was an ophthalmologist. This then inspired him to write the masterpieces Noli Me Tangere and El Filibusterismo, which depicted the maladies of Philippine society.
So obviously, I’m not against specializing. I believe though that each of us needs to develop what McKinsey & Company calls the ”T-shaped skills profile”. The vertical bar on the T represents at least one specialty, while the horizontal bar represents a good grasp of a variety of domains. Both our specialties and our broad knowledge of different disciplines should inform each other to create new products and services that will help us adapt in an increasingly complex and volatile world.
The road to becoming a T-shaped therapist will undoubtedly require lots and lots of studying. But more than that, it entails humility. We will have to admit that the more we specialize in an area, the more we will lack knowledge about other domains that are necessary for succeeding in our own disciplines. To overcome this “paradox of expertise”, we will have to learn from people of various backgrounds instead of viewing the world solely through our narrow professional lens. We ought to stop acting as if we’re more important than the people who are not like us because innovations are the byproducts of thought diversity.
REFERENCES:
Epstein, D. (2019). Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World. Riverhead Books.
Grant, A. (2016). Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the Word. Penguin Books.
Hammer, M. et al. (2021). Ops 4.0 - The Human Factor: A class size of 1. McKinsey & Company. https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/operations/our-insights/operations-blog/ops-40-the-human-factor-a-class-size-of-1
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