The Mentorship difference

21 Feb 2014

Mentoring

BY AMANDA MEWBORN

INDUSTRIAL ENGINEER – Volume 46 Number 1

Take a Job Where You Will have a Mentor

Healthcare reform, improving efficiency will be the only way helathcare organizations can survive. No profession is better suited fro improving efficiency than industrial engineering. Personal experience and observation identifies a few common barriers:

  1. Healthcare terminology and acronyms are foreign to an IE. Medical terminology can be overwhelming, but when you add the alphabet soup of acronyms, it becomes another language. But you can learn the language.
  2. Healthcare processes are more complicated. We are processing people, and processes inherently have lots of variability. But all IE manufacturing tools can be translated to healthcare.
  3. The healthcare industry lacks knowledge about what an IE is and what value we bring. You can teach by doing.
  4. Some people fear needles, blood or other “medical” things. Fortunately, IEs usually dont provide clinical care, so you will not clean up emesis, feces, blood, urine, or even administer a shot.

IEs who want to transition into healthcare can help themselves by finding a good mentor. For instance, dont take the first job or best paying job. Take a job where you will have a mentor to advise and guide you.

There never has been a better time to enter the healthcare industry. If you are new to the industry, find a good mentor. If you have been in the industry, reach  out and mentor a new IIE into helathcare. We need more IEs in healthcare, and to make that happen, we all have to help each other.