From intensive care to EPAM. A pediatric anesthesiologist from Lviv left medicine for IT, and now dreams of a major medical project based on Big Data: the story of switching during the war

What do IT and medicine have in common, what challenges had to be overcome, and how technologies can change the work of medical institutions — Pavlo told dev.ua about this. What follows is his direct speech.

Why I decided to change my profession

Even while studying at university, I doubted whether medicine was my life’s work. But then I rejected these thoughts — I had already put a lot of effort into my studies, and I didn’t want to disappoint my family. I was born in Lviv, and in 2017 I graduated from the Lviv National Medical University named after Danylo Halytsky.

Having received a referral, I moved to Lutsk, where I completed an internship in pediatric anesthesiology for two years. After that, I continued to work as an anesthesiologist at the Volyn Regional Children’s Clinical Hospital for more than four years, saving newborns, often premature babies in critical condition. These were cases when a baby is born with complications and is immediately transferred to the intensive care unit. They are usually only available in regional centers or large district hospitals, and there are very few specialists working there. These departments are closed to outsiders, so little is known about their work.

While on duty, there was almost always a situation that forced me to raise my cortisol levels to the limit. Night shifts, high levels of responsibility and stress — all of this requires maximum concentration, endurance, and dedication.

I tried Frontend, but quickly realized that it was not for me. Then a friend, also a switcher, recommended a course from EPAM Campus. And already in 2021 I applied for a program with Python. However, the material turned out to be quite difficult for me, I decided not to go through an interview for the project and continue studying.

The turning point

I planned to quit my job in March 2022, because I had a terrible lack of time for my studies. I remember walking to the hospital on February 24, 2022, thinking that it was better to do something than just sit at home in the dark. On the one hand, I was grateful that I could help people and be useful, but on the other hand, I felt disappointed because my desire to change my profession had been postponed indefinitely. In addition, it became known that the situation in IT was experiencing difficulties.

After about half a year, I returned to my studies. In 2023, I tried the program at EPAM Campus for the second time, this time in Data Engineering. The lecture materials were clearly structured, which helped not only during the course, but also in my further work. In addition, I already had small projects for the city council on my way.

It took me about 6 months to complete my studies, pass the interview, and join the company. I am currently 30 years old and working with EPAM Ukraine as a Junior Software Engineer.

Behind the scenes of a data engineer

One of the biggest challenges when transitioning to IT was understanding how things work in real-world environments. The Lead Specialist on our team helped me a lot. He developed basic level tasks for newbies, gradually increasing their complexity. During the first few months of work, I began to better understand what was expected of me on the project and what tasks needed to be performed.

I am currently working on data migration between repositories within the Amazon Web Services platform. On the current project, my work is not about writing code from scratch, but about making changes to it.

What connects medicine and IT?

In both medicine and IT, teamwork is critically important. Each member has a clear role, where everyone works as a single mechanism. However, in IT, in my opinion, the contribution of each specialist is more valued. If you do your job well, even being in the position of a junior specialist, it will be noticed and celebrated. In medicine, unfortunately, this is often lacking, especially for junior medical staff, for example, nurses, who play a large role in treating patients.

And also, the importance of visionary thinking. In medicine, it is necessary to clearly understand each next step, because any mistake can have serious consequences.

My goal is to join a medical project in the future and develop the data engineering direction in Ukraine. I see the solution in creating a unified system that would unite all medical institutions in the country, allowing for centralized data collection and analysis.

What helped me and might be useful to you

1. Code as much as possible. I’ve used training platforms like Codewars and LeetCode. There are dozens of online trainers for SQL that you can find with a simple search.
2. Use proven learning resources. I found JetBrains’ Hyperskill resource very helpful. I also recommend DataCamp and FreeCodeCamp .
3. Don’t ignore online courses. Useful materials can be found on Coursera and Udemy.
4. Create your own pet project. You can come up with a specific problem and try to solve it using the technologies that the developer works with. For example, model the process of collecting, cleaning, aggregating, analyzing, and visualizing data for an online store.
5. Use ChatGPT as a mentor. It can explain complex topics, review code, and help with learning.

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