Paramedic to stuntwoman to founder of a first aid company: An action packed career journey with Alicia White

Caitlin: Hello, hello. Welcome to the place for offbeat health professionals who have bravely swapped their health care hats for non clinical creative caps. I’m Caitlin, a psychologist turned copywriter, and this is Healers with Hustles.

Alicia White, a mother of two young boys, is the founder of Perth based company Action and Emergency First Aid Training. As a registered paramedic turned stuntwoman, she has a unique take on injury prevention and management. Realizing that there were limitations to how many people a single set of paramedic hands could help, Alicia focused her attention on creating an army of first responders within a community, hoping to encourage more people to actively take action in an emergency.

Caitlin: Well, welcome to Healers with Hustles, Alicia. I’m so excited that you’re here

Alicia: Hello. It’s nice to see you.

Caitlin: too. Now I’m so excited about today’s conversation. I feel like your story is one that’s incredible. So how about we start at the beginning? Tell me all about your, journey from being paramedic to then stunt woman, and now you’re in first aid.

Alicia: It’s a bit of a shamble really.when I originally started in paramedicine, I had no idea that I wanted to become a paramedic. I actually walked past a flyer at uni and I was like, Oh yeah, that looks pretty good. So I was doing a different degree. It was science based. But it was not kind of fitting when I was getting towards the end of the science degree, I was kind of like, Oh my God, I don’t think I can do the jobs that result from this one.

So what’s next? And I was like, I haven’t even started So yeah, I walked past a flyer for paramedicine and there was a lot of crossover units and I got to have a bit of time off and then I finally got accepted and it was a bit of a weird one. Because at the time you had to actually be employed by the State Ambulance Service before you could even study the degree.

It’s very different now. Yeah, but you were guaranteed a job at the end of it, which was amazing. So really competitive for that reason alone, I think.

Caitlin: Wow.

Alicia: I think they had probably several hundred applicants. And so you don’t sort of get in on your first go. Usually have to apply a few times. I’ve got in on my second round.

I kind of. Figured out how hard it was to interview. You had about a six stage process where you were doing, you know, fitness tests and group sessions and seeing how you interact. And then you have to do all kinds of just a bunch of different steps. So yeah, when I eventually got into that, I thought, this is my career.

This is what I’m going to do for the rest of my life. I was 21. It’s like, it’s me, right. I was very wrong and it’s not until a few years in where I was like, there’s a lot of, a lot of trauma I’m exposing myself to here. Didn’t really think that through when I looked at a flyer and

Caitlin: didn’t advertise that on the flyer.

Alicia: no, not at all.

Caitlin: of trauma. Yeah. Yeah.

Alicia: got to have lifelong things to think about. You can’t unsee. So I basically was, I kind of had enough of it maybe five years in and I randomly turned to my colleague that night after being spat at and abused by so many patients of standard Friday night. And I was like, what else can you see me doing?

Like I’m only in my early twenties. Being subjected to this kind of stuff for the next 40 or so years until retirement is going to have a long term effect. So I don’t think it’s going to last. And at that time, I was still young enough to make silly decisions and start again. And there was, I didn’t even have a mortgage and kids.

So I had the freedom to step outside of what I’d started. And she turned around and said, you should be a stunt woman. So we both laughed and walked away. And then I went home and Googled it that night. So much

Caitlin: I

Alicia: like the fire on the wall. Someone suggested it. I went, yeah, all right, I’ll give it a go.

And so three weeks later, I was on a plane. I’d enrolled in some course that was over east. Cause I’m based in Perth. And. Yeah, I fell in love with it. I was like, how do you do this for real? This is a real job. What? And they told me about it. I came back, I asked for leave without pay. They gave me a whole year and a half.

At that time in the service, there was a succession of about five or six suicides of paramedics. It was quite a horrible time. And that was kind of getting closer to my circle as well. So they were handing out the leave without pay willy nilly and I was like, okay, I’m going to grab that and give it in work.

I had a job to come back to, but in the meantime, I had a good year and a half to give it a crack. And I did, and eventually landed in the Marvel universe. It was basically like being hit again.

Caitlin: wow.

Alicia: So

Caitlin: Yeah, so, oh, it’s amazing.

Alicia: Super different.

Caitlin: Yeah.

Alicia: So one of my spiels when I talk about it in first aid classes is like I’ve been hit by cars, I’ve been set on fire, but I’ve also treated the burns and I’ve pulled the people out of the cars too.

So we’re pretty well rounded here.

Caitlin: You’ve done it all. Wow. I love that. What you say about, I said about that you just like, oh, I’ll give it a go. Like, why not? It sounded like it was like interesting, curious, like, have you. Got a background in like adrenaline sports and things like that.

Alicia: I had jumped out of planes and done bungee and,

Caitlin: Yep.

Alicia: Fun. I liked to do martial arts and things. I had a sort of a natural proclivity towards that stuff. But I, I don’t, it had never crossed my mind that you could actually do that. a career.

Caitlin: Is it a career?

Yeah.

Alicia: To be fair, it’s, it’s for a lot of people that try, it’s not a full time career by any stretch.

All stunties have other jobs because it’s so inconsistent. And unless you’re really fortunate to become like a really core part of a team that is unbreakable, you, you’d be pretty much not guaranteed to have. Regular consistent work, particularly as a female, it’s quite hard.

Caitlin: Is that right? Wow. And what was the training like?

Alicia: So when I went over to Queensland, they had a stunt training facility, and there were regular courses where you would learn how to fight for camera. Coming from a martial arts background. It was all about getting close and, you know, protect yourself and keep it all small. But for film, it’s the exact opposite.

So you have to stand two or three meters away from the person so you don’t hit the artist in the face. And so it felt really unnatural and you had to relearn all these things. So they would teach you about camera angles and how to sell a hit, how to sell a fall without hurting yourself and be able to get it up and do it over and over and over again.

So that existed for a short period of time, but then it sort of disbanded because it wasn’t, it was a business and that wasn’t making money, I don’t think. But from there, it was pretty much all self taught in terms of you would have a group stunt performers that you would befriend and you would all train together and do your own thing, or you would go and specialize.

So you would go and specialized in aerial arts or combat or gymnastics or some other discipline in its own right. And then you got to kind of mash them all together to be a jack of all trades, I suppose. I

Caitlin: Wow. It’s so, it’s so fascinating to think, like you said, like that’s a career and people go into it and it sounds like a lot of fun, but I don’t know, is it one of those jobs that is on the surface, it sounds like it’s quite fun and interesting, but then the reality of it is maybe a little bit different.

Alicia: think it draws a certain person towards it. And so there’s a lot of ego in the industry and I must’ve had a bit of that myself, but I was quite off put by a lot of it. And I think that’s kind of why I pulled back quite substantially. Because when you come from an emergency service, It’s all about camaraderie and it’s almost paramilitary, you know, it’s all about looking after the person standing next to you and it’s just you and you’re a team and you look after each other.

Whereas in film and TV, it’s very much people are all competing for the same limelight and that’s what we’re doing. Stunties are not supposed to be seen. So if you’re noticed on a film, you’re doing it wrong, but there’s still that element of people wanting their time to shine or prove that they have the capability of doing something.

Cause it’s a bit, it’s a bit taboo to talk about all of the jobs that you’ve done or how good you are. So you have to. Show it in a way, but not show it. And there’s just all this conflicting kind of emotional stuff that’s associated with it. So it’s quite hard to navigate and

Caitlin: Yeah.

Alicia: the people that can do it well go the furthest and I just, it wasn’t with my skill sets.

It was nuts. I just,

Caitlin: So you’ve got to, yeah, like,

Alicia: cheese.

Caitlin: yeah,You’ve got to be humble, but then you’ve got to, like, brag or

Alicia: We’ve got to do some pretty amazing things and like literally fly and be set on fire, but tell no one, like it makes no sense. And

Caitlin: is that about? Like, why?

Alicia: I think there’s a humility aspect to it. And the best performers are the quiet ones that just, Diligently go about doing their work and doing it well. And their actions speak louder than words. But when you’re trying to break into an industry, you don’t have that network of people to notice. You quietly work away in the background.

And so for me, for example, I was doing training four or five days a week. I had left a well paying career to, friends, family, I moved inter state. I had nothing. When I arrived, I literally gave up everything you could give up to give it a red hot go. And I just felt like it was never enough.

There’s a lot of comparison. And there’s a lot of Scrutiny about you physically, your performance, your, I mean, a classic example, one of my friends was doubling for a really famous actress and she had to do some swimming through some water and she was a really lean, Muscular dancer, body type, and not an ounce of fat on her.

And she lost work because when she was kicking through the water, the light shone and hit her leg and there was a wobble, which happens when you swim. And they’re like, no, get someone else. And it’s like, Oh, that’s, that’s a lot. It is a lot. And so these, this happens at scale, but it’s. Normalized within the industry, because you do have to look like someone you are chosen because of your shape and build as well as your ability.

And that’s not like any other job. You know, when, when you’re good at something, you work hard towards something, you reap the rewards. But with this one, you can be the best at something and still not get work because you’re too short. It’s absolutely wild.

Caitlin: it’s so heartbreaking. Yeah. When you’re talking, it reminds me of, well, I know that, I really know about the industry either, but like modeling, like that whole, yeah, it’s

Alicia: Yeah. That’s another industry entirely to itself. I mean, there’s lots of, I was told, do some modeling before you join stunts. So that you can get an idea of camera angles and lighting and how to pose and how to stand and all these things. And I did it to try and help this.

Caitlin: oh, wow.

Alicia: but I, I did it a very different way.

It wasn’t interesting like that. I was, I did a lot of prosthetics and all special effects makeup and things that like were characters that were not really me. And it was, it was so much fun. I had some of the best.

Caitlin: amazing.

Alicia: Yeah.

Caitlin: I’m just trying to think like Marvel, is that like what maybe drew you to like the Marvel universe? Like with all of that, like more character building or how does

Alicia: You don’t, you don’t really get to choose

Caitlin: Oh yeah, I get to cheer.

Alicia: So the way it’s you don’t actually have like an agent like actors do. You basically work under a stunt coordinator who says, I know X, Y, and Z, these three people can do that skill. And they also look a little bit like that character.

So then you get a phone call from a stunt coordinator and you’re like, Ooh, . And then you get to come in for a fitting or you know, the director wants to have a look at you, or whatever the case may be. So. You’re entirely dependent on your relationships that you’ve built within the industry. And if you struggle to make those relationships, you just won’t get work.

Caitlin: Right, wow. Are you someone that, yeah.

Alicia: there’s a skill in that. There’s absolutely a skill in that.

Caitlin: Oh, so true, like that networking and, yeah. Are you someone that likes that?

Alicia: Say again, sorry.

Caitlin: Are you someone that likes that networking and,

Alicia: No, no. So, I don’t, I kind of like the, the humble people around me and I, I take a great satisfaction in just watching their magic unfold in front of you and be like, Oh, I never knew they could do that. Like, I love that. And so it’s kind of, I feel very awkward when people are like, Oh, you’ve done this and this and this.

And I’m like, yeah, but that was over 12 years. I’ve done all of these things in between. Like, it’s not like bang, bang, bang, bang, amazing things. It’s a whole lifetime of working, you know? And I think a few months ago, the West Australian newspaper got a hold of the story, I guess. Because I, I, Yeah, it just went wild.

I didn’t realize that there was a media circle thing that happened. So once you’ve been in a newspaper, you get phone calls for TV and you get phone calls for radios and things like that. And It was just all stemmed from this reporter saying my story a bit out of context, and it was almost like cringeworthy.

It’s like, I thought we were going to talk about my new business and the first day of training and that side of it and they were like, Perth’s coolest mom. It was like, Oh my God. And we didn’t see it until it had been released. And it was actually my partner’s friend saw a photo and he was like, Hey, what’s this about?

And I’m like, Oh my God, they said they were going to show us it before they even printed it. It, yeah, just like it, media has the potential to just go wild. So there’s a, there’s a real art in managing that as well.

Caitlin: Whoa, like PA, that whole PR world and

Alicia: Oh yeah. But to be fair, I absolutely cut that one out and put it in a scrapbook so that I can show my son when he’s 18, I was like, see, that’s cool as mum. Absolutely.

Caitlin: amazing, but yeah, like how did you in terms of, I don’t know, I’m just thinking from like a psych, like psychology point of view where we get ethics, like, you know, shall put it like. Bluntly, like, shoved down our throats. How was that, like, in terms of, like, being a paramedic and me here and all of that? Do you get, you know, told anything about how to, not behave, but

Alicia: So you’re representing not just a business and a brand, but you’re representing the healthcare system as a whole. And the minute people don’t trust in the service as a whole, that undoes the trust. the whole bigger picture. And I think we’re starting to see a bit of it. We’re seeing disgruntled paramedics across the entire country who are rallying for better pay and better conditions and all of this.

It’s becoming quite public. People are losing faith in the service, and that’s dangerous. So, that code of ethics is obviously there for a reason, and I didn’t get it when I was 21. I was really young, like, I didn’t understand that. I abided by it regardless, because it was the done thing, but it’s not until now that I’ve kind of gone, what happens if Australia doesn’t believe that when they call triple zero, that someone is coming to help.

That’s scary.

Caitlin: yeah,

Alicia: And I mean, I was talking to my mom only the other day, and it’s like, she came to this, this realization that doctors and hospitals and the system is slow and it’s broken and they’re starting to paint this picture. And it’s something that we’ve always known as clinicians. This is, it’s not perfect.

It is slow. It needs a lot of work, but we kind of understand that it is still a lot better than other countries have it. And

Caitlin: hugely.

Alicia: that, I think there’s a mismatch between the expectation on the healthcare, the mental health services, just that about what people are expecting to be done and people taking ownership of their own conditions and their own.

health, their own illnesses, their own, yeah, I don’t know how you find it in your

Caitlin: Yeah, yeah, it’s oh, it’s challenging for sure. My my husband’s a rural doctor. So yeah, it has.

Alicia: Oh yeah.

So in, we live in far North Queensland and yeah, he says similar things people are starting to, get a different picture about what the health system looks like, But what do they start replacing it with?

Caitlin: yeah,

Alicia: That’s what’s scary, right? So if you had people suddenly turning to like all these alternative medicines and therapies that aren’t, haven’t undergone the tests of time, the trials, the clinical write ups and everything, like it has the potential to, to go wrong.

Really wayward, which is scary.

Caitlin: it’s really, it’s very scary and something that I have to, I’ve had to do a lot of supervision around

Alicia: I completely agree with like the fact that there needs to be a more holistic approach and we’ve got, you know, your Western medicines and, you know, all of these other, some, some of them might be snake oil, some of them might have some merit to them, but while they’re so separate, it’s, it blows my mind.

The, the level of marketing, it’s like traditional, like Western medicine and giving up a little bit. And they’re not marketing themselves the way that these nutrients and these supplements and these snake oil products, they’re really good at marketing, like so good at marketing. This is going to fix your body fat in 20 days.

If you take this bill, like really it’s not, but people are buying it.

Caitlin: do want that. This speaks of how desperate people are and they want that quick fix, but it’s, like you said before, like, well, sorry,

Alicia: can’t offer that because you know that it’s never going to be a quick fix, but that’s not what people want.

Caitlin: exactly. No, exactly. It’s, it’s a tough one, but then when things go wrong, the first thing to do is, yeah, call an ambulance or call

Alicia: Yeah, but if you don’t believe in that system either,

Caitlin: Yeah.

Alicia: it’s scary. We’re in trouble. when I moved towards the first aid training side of it, it was okay. Well, What happens if they don’t believe that system and they’re going to start taking matters into their own hands. What happens if we have so many people and not enough ambulances, we’re going to have to take responsibility.

So the idea was that if I could teach people at maths, Then at least they would have something, which is absolutely better than nothing. And my kids are gonna grow up. I’ve got a little 5-year-old and a 1-year-old, so at the moment they’re under my wing and I can monitor what they’re doing, but they’re gonna go out into the big wide world.

They’re gonna do stupid things. And so if I can teach the people around them, one in every 10 people might have their first aid certificate. I’m just pulling that figure out of nowhere. But that means that my kids are going to be safe in the community when they grow up. And so my wants and needs when I had a kid just changed entirely.

Caitlin: That’s such a Yeah. Say more about that. Like, what changed?

Alicia: I couldn’t fit into harnesses or throw myself down stairs when I was pregnant. So, yeah, I think that’s probably the driving force.

Caitlin: driving thing.

Alicia: Yeah I didn’t know that I didn’t know what my body would Do I, how it would respond to pregnancy when I fell, found pregnant, it was sorry, when I fell pregnant, it was a happy mirror, happy mistake.

Is that okay to call it? But I, I honestly was at peak physical fitness, had no concept of whether I would bounce back and be able to do stunts. And so I started looking for a plan B, I suppose, and, And that looked like I wanted to do film and TV paramedicine. So I focused on getting drug licensing and writing up drug therapy protocols and things like that.

And during my whole pregnancy, I was just like laser focused on getting this done. Got that all approved so that when I had my baby, if I couldn’t do the stunts, then I could be on the sidelines, picking them up if they needed it. That was the idea anyway. And then

Caitlin: was the idea.

Alicia: yeah, it went hand in hand with when you get graded as a stunt performer, you have to hand in all these different certificates and a first aid certificate was one of them.

So I originally started doing the first aid training. For the stunties and that extended out towards the film crew as a whole, which incorporates your camera, sound, lighting, everyone. And then slowly moved into the public sector where I’ve now I’m leaning more towards the corporate groups. So we’re doing training in workplaces.

Caitlin: Nice. It’s such an important thing to, to have. And I’m sure, like, your background, people just must be amazed at, the other stories that you tell. And I, but I think that’s also a really important thing because, you Like we know that storytelling, like people remember stories and so they’re probably going to remember your training as well which is a really cool thing to, to

Alicia: My heart was there anyway. And they, I get a bit of a strange satisfaction out of getting that single person in the group who’s sitting there with their arms crossed because they’ve done 20 lots of training before and it’s all dull and the same thing. And like, I get a satisfaction out of making them smile and changing their opinion of the training.

And if I can get them to walk out and be like, this is the best training I’ve ever done. I’m just like, great. That’s my day. I’m so happy with it.

Caitlin: That’s awesome. How do you, like, what do you do differently? Or what’s your ethos of your trainings?

Alicia: I think it’s exactly that. I think it’s the ebb and flow of the storytelling. So sometimes it’ll be really hard hitting or you might see a gory picture. And then it’s the story of this particular case and it’s quite emotive and it makes you feel that you know that person. And so I, I do tend to over explain things because people too many times are getting told, Hey, we’re going to roll this person on their side.

And if they’re a pregnant woman, they’re going to go on their left side. Okay. Got it. Right. See you later. Here’s your certificate. And people aren’t saying, well, why do you do that? What’s the difference there? And then there’s so many people that’ll be like, Oh, nobody’s ever said that before. That makes total sense.

And you’re more likely to apply it if you get it. If it makes sense to you.

Caitlin: It’s yeah, it’s such a good point that like, yeah, the reasoning behind it. Yeah. Because if you don’t know that, You’re probably not going to remember that you’re also not going to do it because you’re like, yeah, it doesn’t really matter. Like, I can do it this other way. But if, yeah, you’re told, well, X, Y, or Z.

I love

Alicia: you’re just told to do something, because even though you understand it and there’s facts and information behind it. Like that storytelling is still the important thing that weaves it all together, because now I know why I need to do it, but here’s the emotion attached to that. And here’s what I’m looking for.

Caitlin: It makes me so happy that you, yeah, do that. And yeah, you can give that gift to people. What’s your favorite stories to tell?

Alicia: So, so probably things along the lines of if I’ve just been talking about something like a stroke then. It’s one thing to say, rattle off the list of here’s all the signs and symptoms that you’re looking for. And this is what we’re going to do. We need to get them here because of this, but then I kind of pull it back to something that we don’t necessarily think about.

So one particular instance with a little old lady that for all intents and purposes looked deceased and. We had tubes down her throat. We had needles in every arm and we were treating her as if she could still hear us. So we were talking to her the whole way into hospital saying things like, just going to pop this little needle in your arm.

Your son’s going to be in the car behind you. As soon as we get there, you’re not alone, that kind of thing. And. When we got into the hospital you go straight into a recess, say a bunch of doctors and nurses flood around. There’s about 10 people in the room and all talking over the top of each other.

Nobody’s acknowledging the people on the side of the room. That’s kind of where the paramedics can explain. she went in to. She got a CT of her head and they found a catastrophic subarachnoid hemorrhage, so a huge bleed on her brain. And so we walked out thinking we’re never going to see this person again.

That’s kind of, that’s kind of that job done. Move on to the next one. And three weeks later, we got a knock on the depot door from. Her son who arrived with a box of chocolates and a beautiful card that read, thank you for saving my mom, she heard everything that you said, including the doctors telling her that she was going to die.

And it just kind of brings home the point that hearing is often one of the last senses that we lose. And that if you are going to be the last voice that that person is hearing, please, please make it a kind one. It

Caitlin: Yeah.

Alicia: so stuff like that kind of makes you go, yeah, okay, that makes total sense. I’m going to be more mindful of random acts of kindness.

Caitlin: Exactly. That’s it. When you’re talking and I feel we are a bit teary and thinking about my grandma and like we were there when she passed away and that’s like what we did was that talk to her, which I hope. Yeah.

Alicia: she probably heard it. And one of the other beautiful things that some paramedics are really good at is, I remember being a junior officer and working with one of my mentors. And we had a beautiful, it sounds bad, but a beautiful death. And they were in their garden surrounded by these beautiful roses.

They clearly loved gardening. If that’s probably the best way that this person could have gone. And I just remember him putting a pillow under his head and tidying up his face a little and putting a blanket over him and just making him look like he was sleeping. And it looked so beautiful. And I said, why did you do that?

He’s, he obviously can’t feel anything. And he said, no, no, it’s for the family. If they can see this person and hold this person, they just look like they’re sleeping. And that’s so much easier to be the last image that that person sees. So we’re setting them up for their management of their trauma and how to work through that as well.

And so that’s the stuff that people don’t see. That’s the little things that are going to affect the people that are left behind in a positive light. And they’re just, they’re not taught. You’re, you’re not taught that. That’s you working with a colleague. Who has just got this insight that they’ve happened to pass on to you. And that’s the stuff that I love. That’s the stuff that I miss about being a paramedic.

Caitlin: Yeah, that’s just so bright, like helping people process things or have a nice last image. But like you said, you’re not taught that it’s something that is done at a more with your colleagues and.

Alicia: You, you can’t be taught it. It’s the kind of thing that only experience is going to bring you. And in uni, they focus on the disease, the illness, the problem. Like it’s when you step on road. It’s entirely different because it’s never just one of those conditions, it’s all of them, because if you have underlying cardiac issues, you also have X, Y, and Z that got you there.

And so we’re never treating one illness. It’s, yeah, it’s just not the way the system teaches you.

Caitlin: reminds me of,

Alicia: clinical stuff. You would absolutely come across that.

Caitlin: yeah, that’s it. Like they teach you like depression and like the treatment, the CBT for depression, but no one has just one thing like in the research they do, cause they try their best to find people that, you know, mainly have symptomology for one thing, but in reality you have, it’s like co morbid with so many different things and

Alicia: That’s exactly it. And you’re not, you’re not taught to separate those out and treat them individually because they’re in the person. It’s a whole one whole

Caitlin: yes, exactly. Exactly. The differences between the theory and the practice is,

Alicia: huge.

Caitlin: huge. Absolutely. It’s so different. What else do you bring from your, like work as a paramedic into your first aid business?

Alicia: I think the, just the humanness of it. I can’t, I need to bring another person into my business to be the business person. If that makes sense. Like I’m good at the human side of it. But when you first start a business, you don’t tend to go, Oh, look at all these hats. I have to wear. Suddenly I’m an accountant, a marketer, a there’s about 20 jobs.

Right. And you’re like, Oh, I’m only good at maybe three of them. . Do you know what I mean? And so the learning curve is so steep. It’s so steep. It’s, I’ve got really tied up, I suppose, in the idea that if you are good at something, can you love something, then that should be your job. But that’s probably not necessarily true.

Just being good at something is not enough to run a business.

Caitlin: It’s such a good point though, like that it’s have a passion. It doesn’t necessarily equate into be ironic because running a business is a whole different thing. Isn’t it?

Alicia: Yeah, it’s a beast. That is so, you know, and the thing is, there’s all this information out there as well. I went down a YouTube hole. That was insane. And I was like, Oh no, what have I done? I don’t know any of these things. And so I just kept going deeper and deeper. And then you start to find the conflicting evidence, right? Oh, but this person said to do this way. And this person said I should get a coach and this coach. I’m like, Oh my God.

That’s it. And this is the person’s like, emails are the best way. This one’s like Instagram, the way to go. This one’s like, just start a podcast. Right. Right. It’s so hard to navigate. And to be fair though, you will develop an appreciation for the larger corporations that you used to hate, like, it’s like, okay, well, I get it now. I get why you had so many managers at the top end, you know, make sense.

Caitlin: the managers. And yeah, it’s so true. It’s so true.

Alicia: So I’m wondering if I were to step back into a like a service based industry and just be the pleb doing the work. I’m wondering if I would be a better worker because I have this insight now. We will see. Yeah,

Caitlin: it is. If I have this, yeah, I’m not going to lie. I fantasize multiple times. What if I, yeah, I get a, a job and. I actually, I haven’t really told anyone this, but I actually only a few months ago got someone to do my resume professionally because I was like, I need, I need all options. My resume is crap.

So if I just all of a sudden like lose the plot one day, I’m like, nah, I’m going back into employment. I need my resume, but it’s just this nice, like almost plan B option that I’ve got that I might never use, but it’s just there. Just,

Alicia: to, as an entrepreneur, right? Like the first few years, they’re like, if you don’t get through them, then, you know, that’s so normal. Most businesses fail in their first few years and you’re like, Oh, great. I hope I’m not one of those numbers, right?

Caitlin: Is

Alicia: to navigate.

Caitlin: anyone in your like friends and family in business? So did you have an idea of what you’re getting into?

Alicia: No, I think I’m a bit of a black sheep in that regard. I was the only one out of my family to go to uni or anything like that. And so it’s, yeah, I don’t have people to ask or the guidance. And that’s one of the other things is that entrepreneurship is, it’s lonely. It’s, you have to be your own cheer squad.

And when you’re having those moments where you’re like. This is actually really hard. Like, I don’t know if I can keep doing it. You don’t have someone there kicking you up the bum to keep doing it. And so that’s where that networking comes in. You have to have that group of supportive people around you, but they’re hard to find as well, because you join all the networking groups under the sun and then you’re like, we’re not in the same field.

We’re speaking a different language, you’re doing a product based business, mine is a service based, like we’re talking different languages. And so really niching in and finding your people is so, so hard. Yeah.

Caitlin: It’s difficult, but like you say, it’s, it’s so important because that loneliness and isolation, being your own cheerleader and like the accountability, I always thought I was, like so incredibly dedicated and motivated and like a hard worker and all these things, but then as soon as it’s just me that I’m accountable to, I’m like, I’ll just pit snooze on like that, like Google, like, like, you know, reminder or whatever, like, you know, send my like email this week to my list.

Like, cause there’s no one checking up on me.

Alicia: 100 percent 100, which is

really cool about your, your your podcast is kind of uniting like minded people, which is, that’s cool. That needs to happen. Yeah.

Caitlin: That’s yeah, the goal because I, I felt that like loneliness, I was like, well, how can I be? Yeah. A psychologist, like a health professional. And then we’re doing this other like businessy creative work and, and then I realized it’s so common. So yeah.

Alicia: I don’t know if anybody wants to talk about it.

Caitlin: Yeah. And no one wants to talk about it exactly, which like, I don’t know, but yeah, I’m

Alicia: being, being a bit not being good at it straight off the bat is something that people don’t want to admit to either. Like, you have to go through a learning phase in the beginning and you’re going to stuff it up. You’re going to make mistakes, so many mistakes. And the faster you get through those mistakes, the more you’re learning.

So like, I’m really lucky that I established that kind of mentality early on. But if you were to take. One of, I don’t know, even my sisters who grew up in the same household think so differently to me. And I don’t think we would ever land in the same place, like in terms of careers and things like that, because we don’t think the same, but I would love to just see more people going.

I tried a thing and I sucked at it. I’m sick of seeing all these six steps, success stories. It’s right.

Caitlin: Right. It’s, and I’ve a little bit over Instagram at the moment. I’m just, cause I’m just sick of yeah, I don’t know, yeah, I’ve just been annoyed by a lot, like,

Alicia: I actually stopped using Instagram as well because I had all film and TV people on it. And when they succeed, they succeed like top tier stuff. And it’s really hard to watch. You’re like, damn, you got that part in that movie or, you know, like, and it’s so hard not to compare, but you obviously do.

You’re obviously, if you’re working towards the same goal and you started at the same level, you will compare yourself to these people. And it’s like being really mindful of the people that are like a positive person in general or a negative person. I think I’m naturally drawn, I’m a naturally negative person and I try and I’m trying to surround myself with the positive people to filter it out. But yeah, I mean, really lucky to have the most amazing partner, fiance, whatever he is at the moment. He’s just the positive and he’ll give me the kick up the bum I need from time to time. There’s not quite the same as a business kick up a bum, but it’ll do.

Caitlin: But yeah, it’s that, that, yeah, that comparisonitis and it’s, yeah, it’s part of, you know, human nature, isn’t it? But you’re right. It’s, it can be really difficult in those times. So like hold that kind of. Compassion for ourselves when, yeah, like our colleagues, like you say, like start at the same level and all of a sudden they’re up here.

But then it reminds me of something you said at the start about how, you know, like career highlights and that’s over a 12 year span and that there are lots of ebbs and flows and dips and all of that in between, but it would be so nice to see more of the, the failures and just, and failures are part of life and, but I think I would also like to see.

People going, actually, no, I hate this. I want to do something else. And like, that’s not seen as a bad thing. Like, you don’t have to push through and push through. And like, yeah, just keep going when it’s not working.

Alicia: I kind of, I had a bit of an epiphany about that the other day, actually, where I think the driving force that gets you to implement the change has to be that you’re so uncomfortable and there’s, there’s no other way out, if that makes sense. So like, if I was still doing paramedicine and I can’t, I was like, I was trying to pinpoint it.

You gave me a few questions to have a look at the other day and I was like, you know, what’s the. What made the change? Like what? And I started thinking about, I was like, I can’t, I can’t nail it down. I don’t know the final straw was, it was an accumulative thing. And it obviously just got so uncomfortable that change seemed like the better option.

And it’s not, I don’t think it was particularly bad. I just, I wasn’t in a position where I felt that I couldn’t change. So like the circumstances around me allowed for that to happen. But if that, if I felt the same way now that I’m a mother to two young boys and I have responsibilities like a mortgage, I’d probably still be a paramedic.

Quite honestly. And I would push through it because it had to happen because it’s a stable income and that’s what my family needs. And other people are depending on me, but my circumstances at the time allowed for that freedom of movement, it would be a totally different story.

Caitlin: It’s such a good point about that the other circumstance in the environment and like where we are at this point in time, and I’m, yeah, I’m a similar becauseI’m so privileged that I could be like, actually, I’m going to cut down significantly my psychology work and pursue this creative pathway because.

I was burnt out and I was just like grappling with the system and like really angry at like the world and everything and I needed a creative outlet But

Alicia: So like, was you, do you know if yours was an accumulative thing too, is it like a compassion fatigue that prompted you to leave

Caitlin: So I still work as a psychologist now, but yeah, I had to wind back. It was definitely the, the burnout that, I’m still trying to work it out, but it was like where I work now in like rural Queensland, it’s quite like complexity of cases is like huge and there’s no support and I was taking all that, that in and like, it was really difficult.

But then it was also like. Trying to find my place in the world of psychology and that we’re taught one way, but I’m wildly different from that way. Like I’m not a super structured, like CBT, like behavioral kind of person. Like, I don’t think I’ve ever effectively set an agenda at the start of a session.

And I was like, how can I be a psychologist when I’m taught in this model and I’ve got to. I realized that I’ve got a really big problem with authority and, and that was like a real big conflict. But luckily, like I found a different type of therapy that is, yeah, suits my personality. And of course it’s evidence based and all of that, but it’s just a different type of therapy.

And I’ve got amazing, yeah, supervisors and my own therapists to work through all of that. But it was, like a year long thing that I just, that I couldn’t do it anymore. Yes, you

Alicia: similar.anyone that I’ve spoken to in the healthcare profession has always said it’s, it’s broken or it’s not quite right or something needs to change. Like that’s the general consensus and the public is starting to catch wind of that. And it’s like, well, if the people that are within that system don’t believe it and in it wholly.

Then how are we supposed to not push it on people or suggest, I don’t know how to word it, but, you know, how can we push something that we don’t entirely believe in? And I, I don’t know what the answer is to that. And as soon as someone comes up with an answer, let me know. But like the, I was having a conversation, I, I think I said earlier with my mom and.

She was very much like, this isn’t right and this is broken and we’re not getting the things we need. Like I’ve got a little nephew who’s ASD, quite high level and he needs a lot of these supports and they’re not, they can’t come fast enough. And On one side of the scale, it’s like, early intervention is key and you need to get all these things happening in motion.

And then in the next breath, you can’t get an appointment for months down the track. So there goes the early intervention theory. And it’s like, well, the people who are left there standing, dealing with these problems are like, what do you want me to do? We want guidance, but nobody has guidance. There’s no solution.

And like that that there is no solution is so overwhelming for a lot of healthcare practitioners. I think being part of it, a bigger thing that’s just not quite there and knowing that a

Caitlin: And having to sit there with all the distress, but then like you said before, you said something about like people aren’t acknowledging it. And I think that’s what it is. It’s like, we can feel it and we know this thing to be true, but it’s like, we, it’s like taboo or something to be able to talk about it.

And so then what do you do with all of that? Like, I know emotion

Alicia: lot of mine was. repercussions. Like it was always, I grew up in the ambulance service and that really regimented structured environment. And you’re not allowed to talk to the media. They have representatives that do that for the service as a whole. Like it’s really strict. You’re not allowed. We used to have a saying, no green on the screen.

You’re not allowed to take photos. You barely ever see paramedics in uniform on Facebook. And yet the police force has taken an entirely different view of that. If you go on police Queensland, they’ve got offices holding dogs and cute little duck photos and stuff that sells to the community. It’s marketing, right?

Because police are scary. And if you see them with this cute little duck, actually they might be there to help me if they’re going to help this duck. Whereas paramedics don’t have that. We are automatically one of the most trusted professions and that’s drilled into us all the time. And it’s like, if you step out of line or if you have a view on anti vaxxing or something, you’re not allowed to have that opinion publicly.

You can have it in your own space. But you’re not allowed to put anything other than what the company says to be taken forward.

Caitlin: exactly. Yeah. And it’s a lot of pressure to have that.

Alicia: What if I say something wrong? Am I going to get fired?

Caitlin: Yeah, exactly, for me, like, we’ll, we’ll have the therapy police are gonna turn up and,

Alicia: Mm hmm.

Caitlin: get in trouble. It is crazy. It’s so crazy. Oh, I love, I love this conversation, Alicia. Is there anything that You like maybe thinking back to that like interview with the news reporter that you wish you could have said, or like you wish you could have highlighted that didn’t get the time of day.

Alicia: I still, to some degree, even though I’ve left the services ages ago, like, I just, I’m still mindful of Not saying the wrong thing.

Caitlin: Yeah, it’s there. Yeah,

Alicia: would like people to know that there aren’t as many paramedics out there as you think there are, and it is so important for individuals to take ownership of their own conditions.

And so we would get it a lot with like, we would do pickups and have pretty long call outs to people who are really sick because they’re not attending their appointments. And we would literally taxi them to their appointments. And so that’s the kind of thing that is putting strains on the system. And it’s certainly not the only thing, but it is one of the things that’s putting a strain on the system.

And. If people learn to kind of set a reasonable expectation of what is actually available, part of that means knowing we have five ambulances sitting at that station and they are never sitting there. They are roaming. And so one time I, this is years ago now I heard radio silence And that meant that every single crew was out on a priority one call at that time.

And that meant that all the priority twos and threes were racking up, and they were waiting with those jobs, had nobody attending them. And as soon as somebody dropped the patient off the hospital and they were available, they were being sent to these jobs straight away. But radio silence in that five minutes or whatever it was.

I just remember thinking, Oh my God, if my mom calls for an ambulance right now, nobody is coming. Nobody is available to come. They are busy. And it’s nobody’s fault. They are just busy. And. People just honestly believe that I call triple zero, someone gets here in two minutes. That’s not how it works. We have to drive.

It takes time. We get stuck in traffic. We have, we get stuck behind someone who has their music blaring and they can’t hear us behind them or, you know, like there’s all these circumstances unfolding. And if we don’t get there in time, do you know what to do to help? Do you know how to help somebody breathe again?

Do you know how to buy us that time until we get there?

Caitlin: Yeah. Such an important, important message. And on that note,how can people find you and get in contact with you and yeah, do your training if they’re in WA?

Alicia: So my company is called action and emergency. We’re going to try and teach you to take action in an emergency. And if you Google action and emergency, we should pop up. We’ve got corporate training and yeah, one 300 first aid. Is our phone number.

Caitlin: Beautiful. Thank you so much. I’ve loved this conversation and talking with you and it’s, yeah, you’re doing really cool work and I can’t wait to, followyour business journey.

Alicia: Thank you so much for

Caitlin: Thanks so much.

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