Here are three of the lessons we have learned at RGH in our 12 years working to improve healthcare delivery in developing countries. I will be sharing more lessons over the next few weeks so keep saving them. They will save you a lot of work and will help you make a bigger impact. I look forward to hearing how you apply these lessons in your own work.
Lesson1. Consulting in global health must focus on solving a problem and deliver a tangible and sustainable solution.
Knowing your strengths and using them effectively as well as being knowledgeable of your field of expertise is the foundation of a great career. Global health is a complex field where many fields converge, starting with public health, medicine, nursing, and social work and ending with policy and planning, financing, information technology and management, and everything else in between. For that reason, knowing where you and your field of expertise can exert greater influence on the work others are doing their own field of expertise will help you make a bigger impact in global health. Your expertise and professional and personal strengths also help you find the real problem and figure out how to design and implement a solution that will last. We have seen many professionals who are not aware of how they can most effective. They focus on the wrong problem and fail to make measurable impact that saves lives. Whatever your scope of work for a consulting assignment or project, ensure you use your unique strengths and skills to find out what the real problem is and involve all those that need to be involved in the solution. Figure out how to ask the right questions to find the real bottleneck or problem and help you uncover those blind spots that prevent lasting solutions from being scaled up. Be aware that some people may not realize they are part of the problem and may be resistant to change. So keep asking questions until you have uncovered the best way to implement a sustainable solution. Not asking the right questions is usually part of the problem! Think of your current job or assignment. Are you focused on the main problem. Are you asking the right questions and delivering sustainable solutions?
Lesson 2. Experiential learning is better than training
Lots of effort is spent on training workshops designed to improve what healthcare workers know and do. However, we have learned that training is not enough to empower healthcare providers, ensure that their performance really improves and they are able to treat more people better according to quality standards. Experiential learning fixes that problem. This kind of learning programs empowers healthcare workers to use their own experience as a platform on which to build new knowledge and experiences and “apply” to improve healthcare. Participants in experiential programs learn by taking guided actions and making small simple daily changes in the way the work. In this way, every day healthcare workers learn and build new work habits and routines that lead to better practices. Think back of a training you have given or taken recently. Were you able to integrate the new knowledge with every day work? Are you or your students applying what was taught to measurably improve performance?
Lesson 3. Successful global health professionals do not succeed on their own.
Global health professional careers develop through stages and transitions: from a new professional out of college to an innovative problem solver, from that to a recognized expert and then to visionary leader. Transitions from one stage to another can be confusing and unnecessarily prolonged without the counsel and guidance of a career coach. A career coach is someone who has been through all stages or at least is one or two ahead and understands what how global health works, its challenges and opportunities. Successful health professionals move to their next stage and get to make a bigger impact by taking advantage of their unique talents and experience, and “borrowing” the experience of their career coach. In this way, they do not need to figure out what they need to move to the next stage or make the best of the current stage they are. They just need to focus on learning the right skills to move forward and thus gain the confidence they need to take the right steps forward. Successful global health professions all say that without having learned how to surround themselves by the right mentors, coaches and team, they would not have dared to do greater things, apply for a higher job, write an article or even a book, present at a conference, etc. It would have taken them a lot longer to realize they have what it takes to become leaders in their field. If you know someone who is not performing to the best of their potential or who is stuck in their career, suggest they work with a career coach. They will thank you for it.
