Journey to here
On my 'accidentally-on-purpose' journey to prehospital/retrieval medicine and all the clues along the way
Growing up I only had one career in mind, being a firefighter. I loved the idea of being in a close knit team, responding at any moment to rush to places of danger and come away tired and proud.
I never thought about applying to university until my Dad pointed out that I was doing ok at school, and if I wanted to I could be a doctor and be involved in emergency services that way. He believed that I could do it so I started to consider it and carefully made back up plans. After all I didn't know any medical people.
Once I was in med school, during an emergency department placement, a teenager was rushed in with a mechanical cardiac compression device pumping on his chest. All I could think about was what that must have been like looking after him at the scene, and how amazing the first responders must be.
In med school one of my paid jobs was calling alumni requesting donations to the university. I was allocated a prehospital doctor, but it took several shifts for me to build up the confidence to call him. When I did he enthusiastically inspired me. It felt out of reach, but I can't really remember why.
After uni I got myself trackside at Goodwood festival of speed, with a prehospital/anaesthetics specialist, Nico Rosberg and Damon Hill. I remember how great it felt being there. I spoke with the prehospital doc, who suggested careers compatible with prehospital medicine but warned it was a difficult and long road. Yep, definitely out of reach for me.
In my 2nd year as a doctor, I enjoyed my first emergency medicine placement. Resuscitation felt good. Approaching patients from A to E felt good. Sewing up cuts and pulling fractures felt good. I didn't think I was tough enough to get through EM training, and I continued to consider other options.
2 months after starting my first EM job in New Zealand, I was warmly invited to apply for specialty training. It was the push I needed to believe I could do it. With a great study group I got through the first exam and earned myself 6 months in ICU.
Luckily for me this ICU run included retrieval work, picking up patients from hospitals nearby (and sometimes far away) and bringing them back to our tertiary centre for specialist care. Flying around the country by fixed wing and helicopter was so great. I talked to a friend who had done prehospital/retrieval medicine but she had so much more on her CV than I did and I never thought I would be competitive enough to earn myself a job.
Time went by, and I continued to pick and choose locations and departments to work in to address areas I felt I needed to improve in. This resulted in doing 12 months more ICU and 12 months more paediatrics than I needed to complete my emergency training. These were areas I thoroughly enjoy working in, and helped to break up the relentless and sometimes extremely challenging work-life of an emergency doctor.
It was only after I secured a fellow year with a HEMS/rescue helicopter service that all of these moments suddenly strung together in my head. All of these times when I have inadvertently followed options that come up, to suddenly realise where they were leading me to. It's somewhere I dreamed of but never seriously considered as realistic. I've noticed finally that I kept coming back to it, following paths that led to it, gradually becoming more and more qualified for it, and suddenly living it. And only now that it is in my life does it feel real.
I think the moral of the story is, if you keep making choices that are leading you down a certain path, try to notice, and keep going down it.
