Clear, Kind, and Human: What Healthcare Taught Me About Marketing

Reflections from a career at the intersection of brand strategy and bedside care.

It’s strange how often people assume marketing and healthcare sit at opposite ends of the spectrum. One sells dreams; the other deals in realities. One is performance, the other is all about purpose. Or so you might think. But when I began retraining as a nurse at the start of this year, I found myself seeing crossovers - the pressure, the deadlines, the weight of language, the constant attempt to connect with people and guide them through something, whether that’s a diagnosis or a customer journey.

Then there’s the jargon. So much jargon. But underneath it all, there’s something quite profound that links the two: a shared attempt to make things clear, to meet people where they are, and to leave them better off for it.

From User-Centric to Patient-Centred

If you work in marketing, you're taught to be user-centric. In healthcare, it's called patient-centred care. Different labels. Same idea. Both sound good on paper. But in practice, they often fall apart, mostly because the systems around them are built for efficiency, not individuality.

Real person-centred care — real connection, asks more of us. It asks that we slow down, pay attention, and notice what isn’t being said. It can’t be measured in segments or personas. It doesn’t sit neatly in a funnel or a care pathway. Here is something both fields are guilty of: boxing people up so they’re easier to manage. But people aren’t manageable. They’re messy and brilliant and full of contradictions. A nurse sees this up close. So should a marketer.

Stress Behaves Strangely

There’s a phrase we used to say in agency-land: “No one ever died of marketing.” And yet, you would never know it from the way we behave. Tension, late nights, existential dread over fonts and client feedback loops. I say this with love, because I’ve been there too. In healthcare, the stress is physical, often emotional, and very real. But it’s also held collectively. You rely on your team. You check in. You share the load. In marketing, stress can be more individualised - something you carry alone. Something you try to spin into a strength. The truth is, stress doesn’t always scale with the stakes. And that’s worth noticing, especially in how we care for each other at work. Marketing could learn something from this.

You won’t learn everything from a ppt presentation

One of the biggest differences is the proximity to people. In healthcare, you don’t theorise about patient needs, you meet them in person, in discomfort or in crisis. You see the story in someone’s face, in their silence. In marketing, there’s often a buffer. Insight decks. Focus groups. Proxy data. You might write an empathy map without ever speaking to a real person. Sometimes, you just have to get your hands dirty - literally or metaphorically - to know what you’re dealing with.

Assumptions are nearly always false

Marketers love a framework. Nurses do too! Acronyms, protocols, best-practice pathways. But the real skill is knowing when to trust them… and when to step outside them. Because people rarely follow the rules. I've seen patients who defy expectations. I've seen audiences do the same. What someone needs rarely aligns with what their 'profile' says they’ll want. You can’t design care, or messaging, or connection, purely from a spreadsheet.

Clarity helps. So does tone. So does honesty, but most importantly, so does listening.

Team is Everything

This might be the most important thing I’ve learned from stepping into nursing: you don’t get through the day alone. Even when you’re the only one in the room, you're backed by a team - if you let them in. Marketing can feel more siloed. Success is often measured in terms of individual performance, standout ideas, and standout voices. In nursing, ego has no place. The best care happens in the spaces between people, in the handover, the nudge, the quiet teamwork. The shift that ends with everyone still standing. If more teams worked like that, I think we’d all breathe a little easier.

So what’s my point?

There are gaps in both fields. Frustrations. Limitations. Not enough time. But also something quietly beautiful about the overlap between the two — between helping someone understand something, and helping someone get through something. I’m not here to romanticise either world. Just to say: we can all learn from each other. The best nurses seem to know how to communicate clearly and kindly. The best marketers know how to listen. At their best, both professions are about trust. And trust, when it’s built honestly, not manufactured or forced, can change everything.