In my experience so many professionals are lacking in this are that learning presentation and communication skills will give you an edge over the competition.

Also i find that communication skills and leadership skills often become intertwined as so much of what makes a good leader is about how well you communicate with the people you lead.

Good luck whatever you choose!

So, what to learn? Well, maybe you might want to learn more about iPhone apps (there’s a nifty course from Stanford online). Or you could learn how medical informatics will be embraced in the new US health care system. Or, you could read a book “Lean Hospitals” from a classmate of mine (and a topic I’m secretly in love with) regarding applying lean manufacturing to hospitals.

Or, you could learn how to make bronze sculptures, or woodworking. Or learn how to play a guitar (or at least, learn how to figure out Garage Band – I wish I could).

Or, you could figure out how to publish a book and become the next Dr. Oz.

Maybe you might want to look into the next TED conference in Vancouver?

Hmm…

Thanks for the “Nudge” — a bought that book and it has been a few books below on the old reading pile for a while. I’ll move it up.

Using Mike’s flickr link is always an interesting guide. Zen habits also posted recently on Focus and Passion:
http://zenhabits.net/2009/12/how-passion-and-focus-will-rock-your-career/

I support the passion part, but also think there is value in pulling two things, uniquely, together.

Thank you again — anyone else with thoughts you’re willing to share?

I don’t think you can go wrong learning more about management/leadership methods and how to communicate their importance and usefulness to folks working on projects in clinical informatics domains.

On the more fun side, it might be interesting to learn more about the emerging world of personal informatics tools/devices and how they are beginning to intersect with personal health records. The Quantified Self blog is an interesting starting point:
* http://www.quantifiedself.com/

Given your clinical and informatics expertise, I think it would be great if you can get into design, implementation and evaluation of data, messaging and terminology standards. Right now there is a shortage of expertise who are well versed in SNOMED CT, HL7, OpenEHR, archetypes, ontologies, etc.

Yes there are people who are experts with some of these standards but not enough to be able to design and deploy workable systems linking these standards, then evaluating how they are used and what impact they have on patient care.

* Visual Thinking / Visual Modeling Research in Healthcare
Agree, after all a picture is worth a 1000 words
* Prototyping and GUI Design Methods / Best Practices / Tools
these things keep changing. I tried Smalltalk about 20 years ago. There are new tools now but the really nice ones are always $500 or more. Look at ‘traceability’ as a feature. What is really lacking at Infoway is a way to seamlessly link specific items in use cases, to requirements listed in standards documents, to UML diagrams to applications.
* Learn a modern programming language
This is probably too detailed unless you have the right mentality for it.
* Do a deep dive into to some Health Information Standards / Models
There actually not too many that would be of interest to a clinician; ISO 18308, 13606, 10781

* Focus more on various management and leadership methods
This is a key one because it seems so hard to get things going. Mike Bainbridge made a point about how when there is an industrial accident with a few deaths rules get changed and are implemented very quickly. Yet in the healthcare field thousands die and nothing changes.