Empowerment through eLearning in Medicine

You may have noticed on Instagram- I’ve been working on developing online courses.

The courses will have a difference to what’s existing already. There are literally thousands of fantastic courses online that will help you learn to code, sew, speak Spanish, and more.

But nothing out there exists specifically for medical workers and the entrepreneurially-minded out there, from a medical perspective, from real experiences.

How does startup thinking apply to you as a doctor, nurse, physio, engineer and so forth?

Where do you start when a great idea comes to mind?

What’s the truth about how clinicians really feel at times- burnt out, exhausted, demotivated, self-loathing even? How is this similar to how entrepreneurs in other industries feel? And how can all of you learn from these experiences and overcome them, or at least start to tackle them when you’re on the go, on rotation in the middle of nowhere, a busy parent on night shift, or taking a gap year overseas?

I realised that, by exploring all these topics the last three years, even when it wasn’t clear to me at first (this whole blog started by accident, after all!), the whole journey has helped me in my own personal and professional life.

I went through all of this myself, was burnt many times, and know what lies are out there, what superficial constructs have been built supporting the “Silicon Valley mindset”, how toxic this can be to you as a compassionate person who works in healthcare or wants to start in healthcare, and how the medical world is similar to this.

And also, what’s changing about these worlds, to accept more human elements, more authenticity, more vulnerability, and more real sharing of experiences and ideas.

Thinking of your path as your own Startup is one way to start healing yourself, to build resilience, and to encourage yourself when you’re alone, when you feel misunderstood, and things seem tough. Even if you never start your own tech company, it doesn’t matter. We can all learn from startup thinking, even if your pursuit is actually in art or music or sport.

And that’s the thing. From Day 1, I was keen to feature people who are like me- creative as well as in STEM- to help transform the dialogue in medicine, that we are just what our job roles say- RMO, RN1, Dietitian, and nothing else beyond that. What happened to the extracurricular activities we loved in school, and how they were promoted as part of our curriculums there?

I felt ridiculed and even stupid for having a strong creative passion from childhood, and trying to marry this with medicine, which I also enjoy. Really, we all use creativity to some extent in our daily lives. From showcasing interviews with photographers, magicians and jewellery designers, to gaining confidence for my own journey in the creative industries, and to being approached to help start other ventures, this journey has been incredible and taught me a lot that I can share with you, too.

I’ll keep you posted- best is to sign up to the Mailing List at the bottom of this page, and/or follow on social media; if any questions about what particularly you’d like to learn or are struggling with, please send me an email at info (at) themedicalstartup.com.

Thank you for being part of our journey throughout, can’t wait to share more!

Cheers,

Louise

Course Suggestion: Machine Learning on Coursera

Who wants to learn some tech skills in a flexible, free/low-cost learning environment?

Taught by Andrew Ng of Stanford, the Stanford Machine Learning course on Coursera is one of Coursera’s most famous courses; it actually launched the famous Coursera platform! Easy to learn and quick to understand, it’s a great course for learning ML concepts quickly and effectively. It’s a course I’ve wanted to do for a long time, and finally, I have time for it.

Start at https://www.coursera.org/learn/machine-learning/home/welcome.

What other tech courses have you done online?