Bean, Dorothy

If my early career was predictable, my latter career has been far from.

I took the popular route of staff nurse, to sister, to health visitor, then to nurse specialist and fell
apart a bit.

Health care careers can be tough and being a Children’s Macmillan Nurse for 8
years definitely broke me. I walked away from nursing for 12 months.

The 20 years that followed have rebuilt me as a nurse, leader and mentor in ways I never
thought possible.

I moved down south, took up lecturing, got interested in research and data, went back to the
NHS as a senior nurse manager and then got into digital.

In digital I’ve found my natural home. It’s a place where you can innovate, initiate, do the detail
but also the big picture stuff. You can make a big difference.

I took one such innovation into the NHS Clinical entrepreneurship programme which exposed
my frustration at not fully understanding how information technology systems actually work.

So, I completed a degree level programme on software design. Doing a course so completely
out of my comfort zone was such a revelation because it exposed how I’d been conditioned to
think.

I now enjoy a portfolio career inside and outside the NHS.