A medical degree is a vocational qualification and it’s all right to realize after college that working as a doctor doesn’t suit your current career expectations. Maybe your studies prepared you for a different career path, but you want to transition to the medical field without going through all those years of med school. Your older 23-year old self can have a different career vision than your 18-year-old freshman self.

Even if you don’t want or can’t practice medicine, it doesn’t mean you cannot have a satisfying career in the medical field. There are plenty of options to explore. Here we present three of the most common graduate positions in medicine outside of medical practice.

Hospital Manager

Being a hospital manager is a good way to work in the hospital yet have a position where you can utilize and enhance your leadership, problem-solving and communication skills. Hospital managers work with the administration staff to plan and coordinate the activity of the hospital. Instead of working with patients, you will create performance reports for various departments, keep an eye on the budget, and supervise the medical staff.

To be a successful hospital manager, you have to enjoy getting educated on the latest updates in the medical field, on topics such as healthcare quality improvement and legislation. Depending on your personality and goals, this can be a highly rewarding and lucrative career path. However, to become a viable candidate, you need to learn more about financial analysis, health policy, and management, which is why a Master of Health Administration or a Master of Business Administration are typically mandatory for this role.

Public Health Consultant

Public health consultants must have strong analytical and writing skills because an essential part of their job is to analyze information and create reports, which they afterwards present to their clients, whether its businesses, government agencies or health care facilities. The goal is to provide useful information that can lead to better healthcare programs and policies for the general public.

For people who enjoy tasks that involve a lot of research and analysis, but also regular interaction, being a public health consultant is a great way to have a visible impact on the medical field. You will work on identifying the weaknesses of the public health sector and will make sure that government agencies and other entities with high authority will adopt effective policies. To enter this occupation, you will typically need a Master in Public Health.

Medical Writer

Medical writing provides great job opportunities for academically-inclined people who love to work independently. As a medical writer, you will use your writing skills to convey complex medical information in clear terms. You can specialize in scientific medical writing, which revolves around clinical study reports, regulatory documents or summaries of important literature.

Medical writing can also be market-oriented and include copy, magazine articles, presentations for conferences or news releases. As a medical writer, you can become an employee for a hospital, a pharmaceutical company, a government agency, an academic institution or a research center, and you will see your writing appear in medical journals and publications. Due to the competitive and complex nature of the position, a graduate degree is required to work in this field.