Portfolio career ups and downs
I caught up with Dr Carol Chan, Academic Clinical Fellow in General Practice at Imperial College London about the challenges of balancing clinical and academic training. While these challenges apply to a clinical/ academic role split they are relevant to any portfolio career, or even single roles containing distinct workstreams. Here are the highlights of what we discussed.
Cadence
Working with different paces of work
Clinical practice, particularly in a GP setting where most doctors see 25-35 patients per day is incredibly fast paced. In each consultation the goal is to gather data to understand where things are at, discuss a shared plan in context of each individual’s life and priorities, action next steps and arrange follow up with clear advice on what to do if things change or deteriorate… all in 10 minutes! Clinical reasoning, communication skills and decision making make for a really cerebral day at work, but it is all high speed.
In contrast, the pace of academic work is much slower. It can take months for each step of original research to get over the line and depending on the type of project, research can involve a meandering path and some seemingly backwards steps before any progress is made. The feeling of a busy day with tangible outcomes is harder to come by than after a day of clinical practice. It is also generally more solitary work. Finding the right balance between different paced work can help sustainability overall.
Context switching
Juggling different jobs
The more roles within a portfolio career, the more switching there is from one to another. Context switching is a term derived from computing when the CPU switches tasks but it applies to humans too. Every interruption to the task in hand is costly to efficiency, and even more so when the interruption is from an unrelated workstream. Navigating context switching can be as simple as logistics set ups e.g. checking different inboxes on different days to maintain separation and avoid interruptions where possible. Batching workstreams (e.g. having consecutive clinical days in a working week to maintain ‘flow’) can also help. Within a role, scheduling rules such as checking/ replying to emails at certain times of day and batching meetings/ having meeting free days can help reduce interruptions where thoughtstream is key to progress.
Progress
Weighing up the speed impact when taking on a new role
The more roles undertaken, the slower the progress in any one of those roles. You gain breadth at the expense of speed, and this is true in any field but is more easily notable in some, such as medicine where career progression is so clearly defined. Taking on portfolio workstreams can have financial consequences as well as impacting on autonomy e.g. if bound to a training programme for career progression. On the other hand, some workstreams come with autonomy and earning potential so the pros and cons can balance out if factored in. Thinking through what you are taking on, why, the end goals, and how this would change your career trajectory is important when rationalising opportunities.
Academic careers certainly have their ups and downs. Dr Carol Chan wrote a paper at the start of the covid-19 pandemic that received three rejections from different journals. Persistence meant it finally went to publication a few years down the line. Some time later, Carol’s supervisor sent her a link from the Karolinska Institute research led medical school in Stockholm, Sweden. The University has a podcast on medical education where they highlight interesting papers to discuss. And of ALL the literature out there they chose Carol’s article. Just one example of the unpredictable pace of an academic journey: from difficulty getting work to publication to hearing it discussed on an international podcast.