Who are you and what do you do for work?
Hey there! My name is Jonathan and I am currently a Management Consultant in KPMG’s Health and Life Sciences practice based Canada. I’ve been part of KPMG’s healthcare team for 5 years and prior to that I was a doctor working in the NHS for 2 years.
I have been fortunate enough to be part of several amazing projects throughout my time at KPMG. My first project was working with the Government of The Bahamas to establish a national public health insurance agency (NHIA). With my clinical background, I worked with Bahamian physician specialists to determine the availability of tests / procedures in the country and leveraged international guidelines to develop comprehensive cancer care coverage for all enrolled beneficiaries. From there, I used case costing methodology to determine the overall cost of the cancer program and the net effect on insurance premiums thereafter.
I've been on several more projects since then and my experience at KPMG has been extremely rewarding. I feel lucky to work with such a brilliant team!
Describe the first 6 months on the job. What did you learn? What was the transition like?
The first 6 months of consulting flew by quickly. Just as medicine has its own language, so does consulting. Between onboarding and getting started on my first project, I was absorbing everything I could. There were some hiccups here and there, but through it all I was well supported by others within the firm.
While the transition from medicine to consulting wasn’t necessarily easy, it also wasn’t rocket science. Once you understand the expectations and standards of how to do the job (i.e. the standards of professional consulting), the rest becomes much more straightforward.
In addition to getting started on an awesome project (Bahamas), my favorite part of those first 6 months was getting to know others within the healthcare practice. I quickly realized that there were many smart and capable individuals in the team. I felt a sense of camaraderie and excitement to be working with everyone I met.
What motivated you to change career paths?
I vividly remember the feeling I had as I was reviewing my patients in a cardiac outpatient clinic. There was 80+ patients to see that day and as I was scanning through one file after the other, every patient literally had the same problem. At that moment, I had this feeling of dread and frustration. Dread because it was going to be a very slow boring day. Frustration because there must be a better way to care for these patients than me just adjusting their prescriptions.
From there, my thoughts on practicing medicine started to turn. Even though I had invested in this career, I started to notice myself becoming more and more frustrated with the work / life balance. It took me around 6 months to finally realize that I wasn’t happy in this profession to the point where it really pushed me to seek an alternative career path for myself.