The 7 Things Clinicians Do Wrong When Trying to Break into Clinical Product

And what you should do instead to land your dream role

This is Clinical Product Thinking 🧠, your weekly newsletter featuring practical tips, frameworks and strategies from the frontlines of clinical product.

Good afternoon friends, this is issue No. 023. This week, we’re diving into how to land your dream job in clinical product by avoiding these 7 mistakes.

I had the absolute pleasure of co-hosting a panel event with Danielle Brightman, Clinical Director of Numan, on Thursday, talking about how to break into clinical product.

What struck me both during the panel and from interviewing clinicians for product roles, as well as speaking to teams actively hiring into clinical product, is the same pattern I keep seeing.

Brilliant doctors.
Strong clinical instincts.
But a mismatch between what they say and what hiring teams are actually looking for.

If you’re a clinician trying to break into clinical product, here are seven shifts that will materially improve how you show up.

1. Clinical judgement, not niche expertise

Many clinicians assume credibility in clinical product comes from deep experience in a specific clinical domain.

In practice, most teams care far more about broad clinical judgement:

• how you reason under uncertainty

• how you weigh trade-offs

• how you anticipate downstream consequences

• can you think beyond treating one patient to building a system to treat many

Passion matters. Adaptability matters.
Rigid domain defensiveness rarely does.

What to do instead

• Talk through how you make decisions, not just your conclusions

• Frame risk as trade-offs with downstream impact, not binary blockers

• Practise translating individual clinical decisions into system-level thinking

2. Accept that there are no frameworks (yet)

Clinical product is still forming as a discipline.

There are:

• no standard playbooks

• no agreed best practices

• no formal training pathways

• no obvious route in

That’s unsettling, especially for clinicians used to structured progression.

But the practical implication is this: no one is going to tell you what “good” looks like.

In clinical product, hiring teams are looking for people who can:

• define the problem when it’s still fuzzy

• create structure where none exists

• make reasonable decisions without perfect information

What to do instead

• Practise turning ambiguous problems into clear options and recommendations

• Get comfortable proposing a direction before you’re 100% certain

• When interviewing, describe how you’d approach a problem, not just the answer

3. Ignore titles. Obsess over responsibility.

Titles in clinical product are unreliable signals.

The same title can mean radically different jobs.

What matters is:

• where clinical input enters decision-making

• whether you shape direction or review at the end

• what you actually own when things go wrong

What to do instead

• Read the job description.

• Ask how decisions are made.

• Don’t let the title alone make your decision.

4. Stop saying “we can’t”. Start offering paths forward

One of the biggest interview red flags is this sentence:

“We can’t do this because it’s clinically unsafe.”

That may be true but it’s incomplete.

Strong clinical product thinking sounds like:

“We can’t do this because it introduces X clinical risk, but here are two alternative paths that preserve safety while still supporting the commercial goal.”

Clinical product is not about blocking progress.
It’s about finding safe paths forward.

What to do instead

• Always name the specific risk, not just “safety”

• Offer at least one alternative option, even if it’s imperfect

• Frame safety as a constraint to design within, not a reason to stop

5. Design for experience, not just risk

Clinicians are excellent at spotting risk factors.

Where many struggle is translating that into a product experience.

I’ve seen assessments that:

• obsess over edge cases

• catalogue risk meticulously

• but ignore how the product actually feels to use

Things like:

• push notification timing

• scheduling system integration

• what happens when users don’t behave “as expected”

Clinical safety without experience design isn’t actually safe. Patients drop out of poorly designed products.

What to do instead

• Balance clinical safety with user experience, they’re not separate concerns

• Design for engagement, trust, and retention, not just risk reduction

• Consider the holistic end-to-end journey, not just individual clinical decision points

• Test your clinical logic against real user behaviour, not idealised pathways

6. Learn to speak clinical safety in commercial terms

This is the biggest unlock.

Clinical product leaders don’t just understand risk; they translate it.

They can explain:

• how safety decisions affect growth

• where regulation creates leverage, not just constraint

• why certain shortcuts increase long-term cost or reputational risk

If you don’t understand how businesses make decisions, your clinical insight won’t land, no matter how correct it is.

Clinical and commercial thinking are not trade-offs.
They’re mutually reinforcing.

What to do instead

• Frame safety decisions in terms of impact on trust, retention, and scale

• Link regulatory choices to long-term business value, not just compliance

• Quantify risk where possible (cost, delay, churn, reputational damage)

7. Don’t wait for the title to start doing the work

The strongest candidates rarely followed a neat path.

They:

• applied clinical product thinking in existing roles

• built side projects or prototypes

• experimented with LLMs, agents or tooling

• learned by doing, not waiting

What to do instead

• Apply product thinking to problems in your current role, even if it’s unofficial

• Build something small on the side to practise decision-making under constraints

• Document your thinking and trade-offs, not just the output

• Use examples from real work when interviewing, not hypothetical answers

The bottom line

Clinical product isn’t about choosing between medicine and product.

It’s about learning how to apply clinical judgement inside complex, imperfect systems.

The clinicians who stand out aren’t the ones with the neatest CVs or the most niche expertise.

They’re the ones who:

• think in trade-offs, not absolutes

• design for real people, not idealised patients

• avoid false trade-offs like safety and use experience

That’s the work.
Happy job hunting y’all! 💪

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That’s all for this week. See you next time! 👋

🤝 Work with me | 📅 Attend an event | | ✍️ Send a message

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Written by Dr.Louise Rix, Head of Clinical Product, doctor and ex-VC. Passionate about all things healthcare, healthtech and clinical product (…obviously). Based in London. You can find me on Linkedin.

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