Interview by Mitchell McBrairty
MBA Candidate, Class of 2021
I had the wonderful opportunity to grab a virtual coffee with Aish Thamba, a recent graduate of the master’s in healthcare management program (MSHM) at O’Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs and Kelley School of Business. She has now added the white coat and is currently a first-year medical student at the Indiana University School of Medicine. I wanted to understand how the MSHM program added a unique skill set that will help her achieve her goal of becoming a well-rounded physician.
Aish explained why she chose the program, “I had a lot of unanswered questions when I went through the process of helping a family member navigate the complexities of the healthcare system. I wanted to understand exactly how all of the moving parts fit together and how we can make it more efficient. This program helped me develop new ways of thinking with the broader context in mind that will prevent me from developing tunnel vision.”
I first met Aish working together on a consulting project for a CBLS course that embodies this mindset. She is very sharp and always brings infectious energy, but more importantly, she embraced the opportunity to learn from the diverse group that filled the classroom. “I enjoyed learning from classmates that have different perspectives. It showed me how experts in different fields approach problems and gave real examples of impactful solutions to problems in the healthcare system,” she notes. The course also had such a wide variety of different speakers in the class that came from different areas of the industry. These conversations enlightened us to interesting career paths that we never realized existed and put context to how these different workstreams contribute to the system as a whole.
She carried this experience into the practicum in healthcare management, an experiential learning opportunity within the MSHM program. Aish was placed in a project management position at the behavior health outpatient center at IU health. This project required her to incorporate lean methodologies to reduce waste in the healthcare system and work with a variety of stakeholders that had different interests. They often asked for her input during important meetings, which also allowed her the chance to speak impromptu and improve her communication skills.
A moment that will forever stick with her is the time she observed the process for how instruments are sterilized before surgery. “It is complicated. Everything had to be done in a precise manner all the way down to getting the right color tags on each specific instrument. This is a process that may be overlooked by the casual observer but is extremely important because it is directly related to health outcomes by preventing infections during surgery. One thing I learned from this is that process control is just as much about people as it is about specific tasks”. I absolutely love that last line and it underscores the development in her thought processes that she experienced during the MSHM program.
After going through the MSHM program, I asked Aish what advice she would give to current or future students that are following in her footsteps. She quoted Miss Frizzle from the cartoon The Magic School Bus, “take chances, make mistakes”. There are plenty of opportunities to get outside of your comfort zone and meet people you normally wouldn’t interact with, and these experiences will develop into engines for personal growth. This is how you take full advantage of getting your MS in Healthcare Management!
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