Hello Reader,
Somewhere between deliveries, on call overnight as a pediatrics resident, Morgan Leafe sat in a quiet delivery room and typed into Google: “What other jobs can a doctor do?”
She loved her patients. She had known she’d be a pediatrician since before medical school. And she was quietly looking for the door.
Mandy Armitage had been circling the same question even longer — since medical school, actually. Everyone told her the same thing: it gets better in residency, it gets better in fellowship, it gets better once you’re an attending. “I was waiting for it to get better,” she said, “and it just never did.”
Both are medical writers now, and co-founders of the Nonclinical Physicians Network. But what struck me most in our conversation wasn’t the career change. It was what kept each of them stuck for years beforehand — not a shortage of options, but assumptions neither of them had ever actually checked.
The biggest one: I have no transferable skills. Mandy genuinely believed she wasn’t qualified for anything else — this from a physician who navigated conflict, managed impossible volume, led her residency’s newsletter, wrote a textbook chapter, and whose favorite day of the week in fellowship was her research half-day. The second assumption: someone has to give me permission.
“There’s nobody who’s going to knight you. You are now a medical writer.”
Then money — the pension, the sunk cost, the mortgage. Morgan’s advice here was refreshingly unsentimental: do the pen-and-paper analysis before you conclude you can’t afford it. Look at real salary ranges. Look at your actual savings. “Make sure that you’re approaching it with facts and not assumptions.”
If you are out there wondering, here is the sequence of actions that Mandy and Morgan recommend: coaching first, to find out what you actually want. Then research — what exists out there, and conversations with people already doing it. Only then the résumé and the LinkedIn profile, because a generic CV translation lands nowhere.
I’ll admit I was asking partly for myself. And I noticed something familiar in their answers: my ICU night shifts got better after I built something else. Diversifying didn’t dilute the clinical work. It gave me back the joy and appreciation for the simple things in practicing clinical medicine. I believe that when you pursue your passions outside of medicine, you can find your "both/and."
Here’s my question for you this week: what belief about your own options have you been carrying as fact, and never paused to think differently about your situation?
What could be possible if you gave yourself permission to try?
You’ll find Morgan and Mandy at nonclinicalphysiciansnetwork.com. Their first in-person Nonclinical Career Conference is October 17–18, 2026 in Philadelphia.
Come join us there! Meet me in person, as I'll be exhibiting!
🎧 Listen to the podcast sneak peek episode below and listen to the full episode on YouTube, Apple, Spotify, Podbean, or Amazon Music.
Stay mindful and keep leading,
Lillian
Founder & CEO
P.S. Join us for our webinar in September below!
And we heard you! Last time we ran a poll in this newsletter, all of you wanted Speak with Clarity and Impact: A Live Interactive IN PERSON Workshop with Salvatore Manzi, speaking coach. Reply with what you want to work on (so that you are the first to be invited and advance RSVP) and save the date: Saturday March 6, 2027 in Miami Beach, FL
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