Have you ever thought about what Nursing and Project Management have in common? This actually helped me embrace Project Management when I found myself being forced into Project Management and was not ready to move into a new profession.
Right out of High School I trained as a Nurse and worked in the medical field for over 20 years. Then suddenly I couldn’t find a job in the Healthcare Sector and the Healthcare Software Company I was working for closed down. One of the shareholders offered me a job in his IT Company and my journey into the scary world of IT began. I actually asked my future boss what he thinks I could do in his company, since I am a Nurse and Medical Administrator. He told me I know my customer service and customers are the same in all industries. So I unknowingly my journey into Project Management. First I was given all the serious client complaints to sort out and automatically I ended up sorting issues on one of the Mega Projects. One day suddenly the Managing Director called me into his office and told me he wants me to do project management. That was a really scary thought….., especially in the IT world, that was so different from the medical world I came from. I told him I don’t know anything about it and think it is better if he employs someone who is trained. So I thought I got away with it, since I was left alone for 6 months. However the next time I was summoned, I was told in no uncertain terms I have to do project management or I would be laid off. With a heavy heart I took up project management. First I read as much as I could online and at the same time learned what I could from my Data Infrastructure Team on the technical side. I took a course in MS Project, which only proofed to me that I still did not know much about Project Management. So I looked for training. The only reason I took the PMP training, was that it was cheaper than the other trainings like Prince 2 – I didn’t know the difference at the time – and my employer was more likely to pay for it.
This decision opened up an entire new world for me.
But the decisive moment came when I sat for the first day in the PMP training. The trainer was doing the initial introduction of what project management is and was talking about project planning. Suddenly everything sounded so familiar:
Goals, Risks, Planning, Monitoring – those were all terminologies I was familiar with. As Nurses, when you do proper Client Care Planning, you look at all these, define them and plan your care accordingly. That’s when It clicked in my mind and I realized that I can do project management. Thanks to this AHA moment I was able to embrace a new profession in my late 40s and also realized that I had been doing project management all my life. Somehow I always ended up managing one project or other.