I’m about to start my seventh year in medicine. I’m not exactly sure when I started to feel confident in my clinical skills, but I’ve earned a little “street cred” as a PA at some point. On the flip side, when it comes to owning a business—especially a brick-and-mortar one—I’m still very much a beginner. That said, after spending the last few years balancing both medicine and entrepreneurship, I’ve realized something: the two worlds aren’t so different. Many of the lessons that guide me in business didn’t come from a book or podcast—they came straight from the clinic or hospital floor.
In this article, I want to share a few of those lessons and practical takeaways that connect my two biggest passions: business and medicine.
1. Customer service matters
Working in medicine for a for-profit urgent care company has made it clear how much customer service drives business. Every visit is a chance to earn someone’s trust or lose it. If a patient has a bad experience, they don’t come back, and they usually don’t keep it to themselves.
As a provider, I’ve had to learn how to let people feel heard, even when their expectations don’t match what I know they need. Sometimes, they want a specific test, medication, or diagnosis. My job is to acknowledge their concerns, explain my thought process clearly, and help them feel confident in the plan. When you do that well, patients leave satisfied—even if the visit didn’t go exactly how they imagined.
That same dynamic shows up in business; how you treat people matters. It’s often the thing that sets you apart. A clean location and a decent product get you in the game, but good service keeps people coming back. It doesn’t take much to lose someone’s trust, and it’s hard to earn it back when you do. Remember, someone with a good experience tells a few people, but someone with a bad experience tells twenty.
2. Documentation is important
A huge part of medicine is CYA—cover your a**. We’re trained to document thoroughly from the beginning, mostly for medicolegal protection. If you didn’t chart it, it didn’t happen. Your note is your defense, but it’s also how the company you are working for gets paid. In medicine, documentation and chart levels directly affect reimbursement. Our goal is not to game the system or do anything unethical, but to maximize reimbursement for the care you provide.
Two providers can see the same patient, do the same work, and walk away with different chart levels and billing outcomes. Why? Because how you document matters. That lesson has stuck with me, and it carries over into business.
Documentation takes different forms in business, but it’s just as important. In medicine, we have SOAP notes. In business, we have SOPs or standard operating procedures. SOPs are how you create consistency, especially as your team grows. They’re your playbook, keeping your operation running smoothly without constant oversight.
The patient chart justifies your billing and shows continuity of care. Your income and expense records do the same in business—especially for taxes, audits, or when it’s time to sell. And just like progress notes help track a patient’s recovery, KPIs (key performance indicators) track whether your business is improving or getting off course.
In medicine, we say, “Cover your a**.” In business, CYA is about covering your assets. Either way, solid documentation protects you and helps you grow.
3. Be a problem solver
I’ve always been pretty strong-willed and confident in my ability to figure things out. But medicine has honed that problem-solving skill for me. At its core, medicine is about solving problems. Patients come in with symptoms, and it’s our job to diagnose the root cause, not just treat their symptoms.
That mindset translates directly to business. If sales are down, the solution isn’t always to throw out a discount or run a quick promo. Just like in medicine, you have to dig deeper. Is it a marketing issue? A staffing problem? Poor systems? The wrong product? Surface-level fixes won’t lead to long-term results.
Patients don’t come with instruction manuals, and neither does business. Textbook cases are rare. In both roles, you learn through experience. You develop instincts. The more patients you see, the sharper your clinical judgment becomes. The same is true in business: the more you show up, the more patterns you recognize, and the better you get at finding creative, lasting solutions.
I’ve learned how to be comfortable with ambiguity while still taking action. You often won’t have all the information you want in both settings. But you must still make decisions, lead, and keep things moving.
Being a problem solver has made all the difference in my new business. From fixing equipment to reworking workflows to navigating customer complaints, I’ve had to stay curious, keep learning, and trust my ability to figure things out. And just like in medicine, those reps add up.
4. Triage every situation/decision
Triage is one of the most important clinical skills we develop. You must decide which patients need immediate attention and which can safely wait. You learn to assess severity, risk, and impact on the fly. It’s what keeps the whole operation running and patients safe.
In business, the same principle applies. You can’t tackle everything at once. You must sort through tasks, problems, and opportunities and determine which ones deserve your attention now. That’s where ROI, or return on investment, comes in. It’s not just about money. It’s about time, energy, and resources. What’s going to move the needle? What’s just noise?
This kind of decision-making has become second nature in medicine and has been one of the most valuable skills I’ve carried to business. Whether deciding where to spend marketing dollars, which system to fix first, what upgrade to do, or which customer issue to handle personally, the ability to triage helps me focus on what matters.
5. Know when to refer– or defer
A critical skill in urgent care or emergency medicine is knowing when to consult another provider or refer a patient to a higher level of care. It takes time to develop that judgment, but it’s vital. You quickly learn that you don’t and won’t know everything. There’s always someone with more specialized knowledge or a better-equipped setting to handle what the patient needs.
That same mindset is essential in business. You have to know when to delegate tasks—whether it’s calling in a repair tech, hiring a marketer, or outsourcing bookkeeping. More importantly, you have to know when you’ve hit a wall and need advice or mentorship. Trying to do everything yourself isn’t efficient. It’s expensive.
In medicine, you might save a life by recognizing someone having a heart attack and getting them to where they need to go. In business, you protect your time and profitability by focusing on the highest-value tasks—and letting go of the rest. That might mean hiring someone to handle $10/hour tasks so you can focus on the $1,000/hour problems that move your business forward.
6. Systems make everything better
I am such a systems person, but I didn’t start out this way. In medicine, we don’t always think of ourselves as working in systems, but they’re everywhere. Hospital protocols, triage processes, and documentation templates all exist to keep patients safe, reduce liability, and help us work more efficiently. When you start a new job, you learn the workflow, but don’t always stop to appreciate how much those systems hold everything together.
In business, systems are everything. SOPs, checklists, and automations save time, money, and brainpower. They make it possible to hand off tasks confidently, even if you’re not physically present. Because I’ve documented my processes, I can bring someone in, have them follow clear steps, and trust that things will still get done right.
My rule of thumb is simple: if you do something more than once, systematize it. Stop reinventing the wheel. Stop holding it all in your head. Systems give you space to lead, grow, and eventually step out of the day-to-day without the whole thing falling apart.
7. Listen to your intuition
On one of my first ER shifts as a PA student, a preceptor told me, “You should be able to know the patient’s disposition from the doorway.” That stuck with me. It doesn’t always work that way, but over time, you start to develop a sense—an intuition—for how sick someone is just by how they’re sitting, breathing, or responding. You build that instinct through repetition, reflection, and reps.
Intuition plays a big role in medicine. It helps you triage effectively, manage your time, and make quicker decisions when things are moving fast. You learn to trust your gut because it’s based on experience, even when you don’t have labs or imaging back yet.
That same kind of intuition shows up in business. Whether it’s hiring someone, entering a deal, or navigating a conflict, you won’t always have a spreadsheet or checklist to guide you. Sometimes, you just know something’s off—or something’s worth pursuing. Use your gut instinct as a tool. Trust it when something doesn’t feel right, and pay attention when something clicks.
8. Burnout is burnout
Burnout is almost a taboo thing to talk about in medicine. It’s often blamed when someone changes jobs or leaves the field entirely, but I think a lot of those feelings can be reframed. For me, avoiding burnout comes down to being intentional about not working too long or too much on one thing, taking time away from work and business, and spending quality time with my family. My brain doesn’t stop going, so I use that to dive into different projects or find new things that interest me. That variety helps keep me from feeling stuck or drained. Business ownership can be just as exhausting as medicine. It never really turns off—you’re always working or thinking about what needs to get done. But keeping boundaries, pacing yourself, and finding ways to rest outside of work can help you avoid burnout, no matter what you’re doing.
9. Lifelong learning
In medicine, it’s essential never to feel like you know it all. I learned that early in my career by watching physicians who had been practicing for decades continue to ask questions, read, and admit when they didn’t have all the answers. Medicine is constantly evolving, and you have to evolve with it as a provider. There are always new treatment guidelines, new medications, and new diagnostics, and if you don’t keep learning, you’ll fall behind.
The same is true in business. It’s easy to get stuck in a rut thinking you’ve seen it all, tried it all, and found “the way” to do things. But just like in medicine, if you stop innovating, your business stops growing. You have to constantly look for ways to improve systems, refine processes, and adapt to change.
Humbling yourself enough to admit you don’t know everything and being open to learning from others in the space—can elevate your business more than trying to do it alone. Whether it’s reading, networking, listening to a podcast, or just observing how someone else handles things, staying in learning mode is one of the best habits you can carry from medicine into entrepreneurship.
10. Sometimes people suck
You can have the best customer service and still run into people you’ll never make happy. I first learned this in medicine, but it also applies to business. I treat every patient the same, my approach is consistent, and I genuinely try to help. But every once in a while, someone storms out angry or acts completely unreasonable. It’s rare, but it happens. At first, those interactions bothered me more than they should have. Now, I’ve learned to brush it off. Not everyone will like you, agree with you, or even act rationally—and that’s okay.
It’s the same in business. You can bend over backward for someone and still get a bad review. You can’t cater to everyone, and you shouldn’t try. Deliver great service and treat people fairly, but don’t let one unreasonable person derail your energy or standards.
Trying to please everyone will leave you frustrated, distracted, and burned out. Set boundaries, be kind, and move on.
Conclusion
All of this to say—if you’re a medical professional wondering if you have what it takes to own a business, I promise you: you know more than you think, and yes, you can do it with the right amount of work. The two worlds aren’t as different as they seem. So many of the skills I use in business come directly from what I learned in medicine.
Customers and patients? It’s all people work. While it can feel strange to think of medicine as a business, it is, and the same principles apply. If you’re doubting your capabilities, don’t. Take the leap and figure it out on the way down. Maybe that’s terrible advice, but it’s what I live by, and so far, it’s working out fine.