Heather A. Davis, Ph.D.
February 2025
I joined the Pediatric End-of-Life Care Research Team in April 2023 as Health Policy Postdoctoral Research Fellow, four months after graduating with my Ph.D. in Human Geography. My specialty is Health Geographies, and my research focused on older women and the health inequities they encounter across the lifespan. Although I had no background in nursing, and I was a qualitative researcher, I nevertheless applied for the Health Policy Postdoctoral Research Fellow position because the two disciplines intersect in the study and translation of end-of-life care. Both the team and I were studying this area within our respective research specialties. This opportunity has been life-changing for me. While there have been many things I’ve learned along this journey, I want to share three important things that I consider to be most important.
- Be open to looking at and applying to opportunities outside of your field that may have similar programs, projects, or topics of study. Consider, even, cross-training in quantitative methodologies or qualitative methodologies. I came into the postdoctoral fellowship as a qualitative methodologist, wishing that I could be a mixed methodologist. I had always lacked belief in my abilities to learn quantitative methods. My supervisor / PI gave me the space, opportunities, and time to gain those quantitative skills, helping to fulfill a wish I didn’t think possible.
- Proactively take the initiative to seek out ways you can contribute to the research, teaching or other work that the team is doing, even if it’s not your research specialty. Reach out to potential collaborators and build strong networks. These will help you to collaborate on projects or publications. When I joined the team, the first thing I did was to say “How can I help you? Where can I support the work you’re doing?” And, in turn, my supervisor / PI and the team did the same for me.
- Approach everything as a learning experience. No matter how small or mundane the task may seem, there’s something you learn from each thing you do. Try to identify gaps that you have and upskill yourself in those based on the work that you’re doing in the team or that you didn’t get the opportunity to undertake while getting your PhD. For example, I learned how to research and monitor hospice and palliative care legislation, which later led to a successful research project and publications.
Even if you think you can’t, you can pivot. You can take your knowledge and skills in your field of study and apply them to a different discipline, learn from that different discipline, create new research, establish new or additional networks, and grow in new skills and experiences. Consider it all to be professional development. Invest in yourself by investing in what opportunities there are available to you. This gives you an interdisciplinary and intersectional advantage and a wider range of skills and experiences that are not only attractive to employers but that open lifelong opportunities beyond what you may have considered for yourself!