.jpg)
It Takes Heart
It Takes Heart is an unmissable podcast where healthcare workers share their honest and unique experiences from Australia’s frontline.
Discover real-life stories of passion and purpose, insight and inspiration from people on the inside and tales that are equal parts heart-warming, heart-wrenching and hilarious. It Takes Heart is co-hosted by cmr | Cornerstone Medical Recruitment CEO Samantha Miklos and Head of Talent and Employer Branding Kate Coomber.
It Takes Heart
Physio on the Move: Locum Work from Ski Fields to the Outback
Today, we get to sit down with physiotherapist Judy Chesney who's rich background in anatomy, extensive private practice experience, volunteer work in East Timor, and specialized training in pediatrics, is a powerful testament to the versatility and dedication required to be a rural generalist physio.
Judy shifted from private practice to locum travel work in 2021. Her adventurous spirit has taken her to diverse rural locations like Mildura, Mount Isa, and Thursday Island, where she has made significant contributions to public health.
For graduate physiotherapists contemplating rural generalist roles, Judy shares invaluable advice, underscoring the "fake it till you make it" approach and the importance of leveraging available resources and networks. She opens up about her journey from managing limited supplies to engaging deeply with community priorities, showing how adaptability and genuine care can lead to impactful health outcomes.
We also dive into the complexities of working in remote and Indigenous communities, highlighting the scarcity of resources and the necessity for healthcare professionals to improvise and advocate for their patients' needs. Judy’s insights on the importance of community engagement offer a blueprint for achieving long-term positive changes.
This episode of It Takes Heart has CEO of cmr Sam Miklos hosting alongside Head of Talent and Employer Branding, Kate Coomber.
We Care; Music by Waveney Yasso
More about Judy's Charity of Choice:
St George Tri Club
St George Tri Club is an affiliated triathlon club with Triathlon Queensland and we welcome all abilities to our club. It's the best place to start if you want to try a triathlon or just want to get fit and exercise with like minded people.
Our club is all about having fun and encouraging each other to enjoy getting fit and staying healthy together. Visit http://www.battleonthebalonne.com/ for more information.
Get to know cmr better!
Follow @ittakesheartpodcast on Instagram, @cmr | Cornerstone Medical Recruitment on Linked In, @cornerstonemedrec on TikTok and @CornerstoneMedicalRecruitment on Facebook.
We care for the land and sea. We care for the energy. We care for our community. We care. Welcome to it Takes Heart. I'm Sam Miklos and I'm Kate Coomba. We hope you enjoy these incredible stories of healthcare professionals making a difference in communities across Australia and beyond. Through our conversations, we look to celebrate the spirit of community and care. We acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land who have long practised and shared ancient methods of healing, providing care and support for their communities with wisdom passed down through generations.
Kate Coomber:Join us as we explore what it truly means to take heart.
Sam Miklos:Today we're chatting with physiotherapist Judy Chesney. Judy was working in private practice when, in 2021, she made the bold move into locum travel work and hasn't looked back since. Hailing from Bellingen in New South Wales, judy is full of life. She loves to travel, keep active, explore new and wonderful places and makes lifelong friends wherever she goes. In recent years, judy has largely worked as a rural generalist physio in locations like Mildura, catherine Young, mount Isa, st George, cairns and even Thursday Island. We're really looking forward to hearing about the life of a travelling rural generalist physio today. Welcome, judy, to the it Takes Heart podcast.
Judy Chesney:Thank you, good to meet you. Thank you very much.
Sam Miklos:So, Judy, where are you today?
Judy Chesney:I'm actually working in a role that I picked up myself. It's in uh Jindabyne, so there wasn't much on offer when I was looking. So I saw an ad for a private practice in Cooma and I thought, well, I'll come down and I'll try some skiing. I was gonna say are you skiing? Well, I'm trying. Yes, I've taken a few, I've taken a few lessons and I'll try some skiing. I was going to say are you skiing? Well, I'm trying. Yes, I've taken a few lessons and I'm going very slowly. I haven't had skis on for 35 years, so it's a big learning curve. Again. How?
Kate Coomber:amazing, how amazing. How did you?
Judy Chesney:actually get into. How did you become a physio? Well, I think I've always been quite interested in the human body. I started off doing a studying teaching and did some units of anatomy and I found them very easy and interesting to do. And then the opportunity was there to to turn it into a career. I could have chosen physiotherapy or chiropractic or osteopathy, but physiotherapy happened to be the one that was free, so I took a leap and went well, I'll do that. And I had a young family so I thought I needed to have a career of some sort that would support them, yeah, and that possibly would be really good for travelling and moving out of the city yeah, and did you always work in private practice or did you work across before you stepped into this travelling locum work?
Sam Miklos:where did you work predominantly?
Judy Chesney:No, I spent 14 years in the public health system in a rural hospital, so on the north coast, and then I did a little bit of rehab work and private practice work and some in the private hospital. So I did quite a few bits and pieces worked in the nursing homes. So it actually really sort of exhausted most of the opportunities that were available around where I was living. And then I noticed a job with Cornerstone at Mount Isa and thought, well, it fitted my skill set and I look at that. I did some volunteer work years ago in East Timor. Was that training nurses? Yeah, training nurses. Was that training nurses? Yeah, training nurses. And then I became interested in paediatrics and did some time down in Melbourne and in another paediatric private practice. So I've got a kind of a very big range of generalist skills. You know orthopaedics, surgery, paediatrics. So that's when I saw this job at Boundizer and thought, well, I could do that, not a problem, and the idea of travelling and seeing a different place appealed to me.
Kate Coomber:Yeah, Sam mentioned there that you're a rural generalist physio. What does that mean? What is your role typically when you go into these communities?
Judy Chesney:What does that mean? What is your role typically when you go into these communities? Well, it depends on the community. So different places have different demands. Like in a big rural setting there might be, you know, four or five other physios working and I might be just working in a particular ward but I might rotate around to the different wards. So I might go through a rehabilitation ward where you've got people who've had strokes and things like that, and then maybe I'll spend some time in a respiratory ward and do a little bit.
Judy Chesney:So you've got to because rural generalist wasn't even a thing when I first learned but you've got to be able to understand what your limitations are and where your strengths are and also have a kind of an idea of where to start with most of these jobs. So you know the sort of people I've seen in Mount Ise are different from the people in Mildura or are different from the people in, you know, thursday Island. So it is to have a wide range of skills across a lot of different areas or know enough about your limitations that you can reach out to someone who's more experienced and ask them where do you go? And usually that's with physio networks. That's pretty easy to do yeah, you talk.
Sam Miklos:you've mentioned Mount Isa a few times and I know that you really loved your time in Mount Isa. What was it that made that such an incredible role?
Judy Chesney:I think the thing was is that it had an amazing team of allied health professionals working there, and the structure at the time was management was really supportive, and so I think it was just the correct mix. You know, they had an incredible team and it was one of the best experiences I've ever had in my physiotherapy career, one of the best jobs At the time I was there. They had an incredible team to work with, you know. So I felt very supported, very appreciated, which is something that sometimes doesn't happen in all positions. Yeah, just appreciated and supported. So I'd come from a job that I didn't feel appreciated in and then all of a sudden I did. So that was really good.
Kate Coomber:My skills were appreciated, yeah, and does that lead you to then feel that you're having even bigger impact in these types of communities?
Judy Chesney:Well, I think so, if you're appreciated. It means, then, that you can use all the skills that you have, you know, whereas if someone doesn't appreciate that you've got skills or expertise, they tend to take a much more dictatorial approach to what you do. They sort of micromanage you a bit more, which is uncomfortable.
Sam Miklos:Judy, having worked in the permanent roles and then stepping into this travelling locum work, do you feel like you're able to have as big an impact in a health service when you're there for a couple of weeks at a time?
Judy Chesney:Yeah, I think so, because I bring my own skills that they may not have seen there for a while I mean, often it can be just the only physio that they've seen for a long time and because I've got a lot of skills across a lot of different areas. I could approach a problem in lots of different ways, you know. So it may be that that my approach is different from something that I've had before, or a different way of looking at things. Yeah, so I think that that is the case, is that I can have an impact and, you know, maybe get them to think about things in a different way.
Kate Coomber:Do you feel sometimes when you go into communities it can be difficult to build trust. You know, I'm sure with contractors coming in regularly it may feel like a bit of a revolving door for the people who live there. How do you build that trust and establish it? When you arrive? People who live there, how?
Judy Chesney:do you build that trust and establish it when you arrive? Look, I don't think that. I think they are used to having people going in and out because they have doctors that do that too. So I think they are used to people going in and out a bit. I try to become involved in the community and, you know, out a bit. I try to become involved in the community and you know sort of make myself get out and do things with the people in the community, whether it's going to the local stalls or, you know, getting involved in the gym or the local sports club or whatever. Whatever, I try to get involved a little bit so that I'm, you know, they can see that I'm, you know I'm there to be. You know I'll go to the trivia night at the pub and you know, yeah, so I get sort of known around the area a bit, yeah.
Sam Miklos:Judy, if a graduate physiotherapist was listening to this podcast and you know they weren't familiar with the role of a rural generalist what skills would you tell them to get before? Like, is it possible for a grad to go out in these rural generalist roles? Do you think there's a certain skill set that they should get first to make them, I guess, better?
Kate Coomber:equipped. How do they transition?
Judy Chesney:Look, I guess, if I was sort of thinking about that, that it would be hard. But I think, um, if I look back at my career, where I first moved as a graduate physiotherapist into a small rural hospital and I had to all of a sudden be the rural generalist for that hospital, then I'd say that you just have to kind of fake it till you make it really.
Sam Miklos:Yes.
Judy Chesney:You just have to keep going, just embrace everything and just go. Well, I'll just do the best I can in this situation and sometimes you don't know how much you know until you try. You actually do know more than you think you do. You know, something might look complicated, but there's a lot of information available for physios now online or, you know, via zoom or electronic hookups to different major hospitals where you can get the information you need to help people, and you can actually even now go and do consultations online with a surgeon sitting next to the patient and things like that. So there's a lot of scope there for getting that expertise and feeling very comfortable. But you know, there will always be things and there still are things that I come across in my roles where I go. Oh, I haven't seen one of these for a while. What do?
Sam Miklos:I do.
Judy Chesney:And you just have to look at how you can get that information or who you can access to give you that information.
Sam Miklos:Yeah, I've got to tell you that resonates. I graduated as an OT, myself as an occupational therapist, and I remember that fake it till you make it for those first few weeks where the orthopaedic surgeon would come in and say a splint, and I was like I couldn't even work out how to turn on the splint pan, let alone make the splint. I was like where do I do that and what am I making it with? He was like what are you doing here? I was like I'll make something.
Kate Coomber:I don't know if it's what you'll be wanting, but it'll look fabulous it sounds like, then the team that you have around you is really critical, that supportive, you know helping each other. Yeah, yeah, it's what they meant Is there a.
Sam Miklos:I mean you've worked. When we said in the intro, some of the contracts you've had, like some incredible places, has one other than Mount Isa been particularly memorable? Is there another place that you've really enjoyed or that you didn't expect to have, you know, such a great experience Look?
Judy Chesney:I think the top of my list is Thursday Because I looked at them. They're all great, but I think the top of my list is Thursday Island, because the things there, because the place is so incredible.
Kate Coomber:Can you maybe paint a picture?
Judy Chesney:Judy Like some people won't know what's at Thursday Island.
Judy Chesney:What's the health service? Talk us through it. So Thursday Island is right up the tip of Australia and they service I think there's about 50 islands in the Thursday Island complex. It's a mixture of sort of Polynesian background people and Indigenous people as well, as, you know, workers through the area and it's got that very unique feeling of, you know, easygoingness that you know a holiday in Fiji would have. It's very hot there, you know.
Judy Chesney:Plus, you've got, you know, rural all the problems that come with rural Indigenous communities as well. You've got a lot, you know, and and people being shy about coming for services and things. So it's uh, and you know there's lack, lack of resources there, like a lot of places too. So there's a large hospital there where I was working and it services that whole community and so they have a full range of things from, you know, fractures and orthopedic problems right down to pediatrics and, uh, anti-natal. So it's it's quite a big and they have outreach.
Judy Chesney:So you know you go out on a helicopter and stay a couple of days on a little island and see the local community and it's just amazing. You work in a small clinic and just try to do the best you can for the people while you're there, you know, and it's a beautiful environment, you know, just, my view from the window was the ocean. It was just incredible, it was just a beautiful place to be, you know. So, yes, thursday Island would top my list, I think, of incredible places to work, but you know, there's limitations with everything too. It might not have been as interesting as other places to be, and what?
Kate Coomber:about your bucket list? Where's on the list where you really want to go?
Judy Chesney:I want to go to Broome.
Kate Coomber:I want to go to Western Australia, yeah that's on my bucket list and is there any reason in particular that that is high on the list?
Judy Chesney:well, because I haven't been able to get there yet, I haven't had a holiday there or anything else. I know people who are working there now that I'd like to see and catch up with you. Know people that I've, and that's. The other thing is, when you're doing these roles is you often bump into the same people nurses and other allied health professionals who are also doing that locum circuit and you go oh hi, you know, I remember you from you know Mount Isa or you know wherever, and so you do keep track of people. So I guess I haven't worked in Western Australia yet, so I'll stick to Western Australia.
Sam Miklos:Judy, you've made so many great friendships along the way. Do you ever find it hard to leave a place?
Kate Coomber:And how do you decide how long to stay in each contract?
Sam Miklos:Yeah, and how long are you there? Because, yeah, what's the rhythm? Like, are you only away for a couple of weeks? Then you go home, like where's home for you?
Judy Chesney:Home is Bellingen, that's where my family is. It is hard sometimes, depending on what's going on, you know, with my family is hard sometimes, depending on what's going on, you know, with my family. Um, so you know, I've been taking up to 12 weeks and then I'm at eiser. I did two, lots of 12 weeks but had a break in the middle. Um, it is, it is hard, family and friends, you know that. You know, back home in Bellingen to sort of keep up with that, but I find that I'm only back a couple of weeks and then I'm ready to go again. You know like I really like getting out and seeing the new places and getting out and going. So yeah, as much as I like to be home, I also like to go. You know, have you always had I like to sleep.
Kate Coomber:Have you looked at travel?
Judy Chesney:I think I, looking back, yes, I have. Yeah, yeah, I have. I mean, when I had children, of course it slowed down a little bit, but previous to that I was, I travelled a bit as well, you know. So I'd work eight months and then travel a bit and then, you know, come back and work a bit more and travel again. So, yeah, so it feels very comfortable to me. Um, there are places that if I was a younger woman and I didn't have family ties, I would have picked up the jobs that were going there and gone. Yeah, I'll stay here. Thursday Island If I'd been younger, I would have taken a job at Thursday Island or Tully had a job going to. I would have loved to stay at Tully. That was very nice there, depending on the point in your life.
Sam Miklos:really, yeah, yeah, judy, I'm always keen to hear like how we can better support you know candidates' wellbeing on placement and I did read that you were crowned the Lifetime Member Category Winner for the National Weight Watchers Slimmer of the Year competition.
Judy Chesney:Oh God, god that just never leaves, does it? I bet it doesn't, I bet it doesn't go away, but I.
Sam Miklos:But it got me thinking. You know how some of those places you've mentioned, like, how do you keep active, how do you eat healthy, um, how do you look after your well-being while on placement? And you know, in some of these places where there might just be an IGA, not necessarily a gym, what do you do? What have you seen?
Judy Chesney:Well, if there's a swimming pool, I'll go swimming. So I do swimming. Sometimes I take my bike with me. So I've, you know, take the bike riding here I'm going. Well, here I'm going skiing. You know, take the bike right here I'm going well, here I'm going skiing. Um, so I just try to find whatever is the physical activity of the area at the time. You know to, and it might be just walking or running or doing something like that to just stay active. There's usually a small group of people that do some activity and and it's different in every place, and sometimes it takes a bit of time to find out what's. What's going on.
Judy Chesney:Um, food wise, I think that that's probably the difficult thing. The expensive thing is, each time you go to a new place, you've sort of got to set yourself up with your pantry. You know, because you know you've sort of got to set yourself up with your pantry, you know, because you know you've got no sauces and no condiments and nothing like that, no tools to make anything, so you can't really sort of get into making fancy meals. Often my meals are just ready meals, or I mean, at the moment I'm drinking a lady shake just for the sake of it, you know, to fill me up because it's easy and it's cheap. So I look at what I can have that's easy and cheap and then maybe once a week I'll go down to the pub and have a pub meal or something like that. You know.
Judy Chesney:So I don't know that it's inexpensive. It can get expensive in terms of, you know, setting yourself up and then having the foods there that you want but you just make, do you know? So some places I mean Thursday Island didn't have a big pick of groceries either. You just whatever you can find that's healthy and, you know, nutritious. There's usually fruit and whatever. Some places don't have pretty expensive fruit, you know. So I know when I was in Weeper they had to rely on a barge to bring their food in, so sometimes there'd be nothing left in the supermarket, very much at all and, I guess, seasonally, with weather that probably impacts some of those communities as well.
Judy Chesney:Absolutely, absolutely. Yeah. So there'd often be sort of no vegetables there to speak of or anything like that. Yeah so you just have what you can have you know?
Kate Coomber:yeah, you sound like you really absolutely thrive in this travelling locum work. Do you think you'd ever go back, I guess, to a permanent local job, or you know what is it that?
Judy Chesney:you love so much about this? No, I don't think so. I don't think so. What do you love?
Judy Chesney:so much about it? No, I don't think so. I don't think so. What do you love so much about it? I think it's the variety. I think it's just the incredible variety of things.
Judy Chesney:Even you know, it might be a rural hospital in one place and a rural hospital in another place, but they're totally different. How so they're totally different? Well, just even the people in the township are different. You know, like, for instance, mildura, you'd get a lot of people who were having alcohol withdrawals. It's a very big winemaking country, so you'd get people who were suffering from alcohol-related neurological diseases or strokes. So it was an affluent community where people do those kind of things. Or else you'd go into another place, like Catherine, and that would be with people with vascular diseases and malnutrition and things like that.
Judy Chesney:So it was very vastly different. The sort of communities and the presentations that you have to help with, you know, and a rich community, you know they might have access to all your walking frames and your aids and your wheelchairs and your services, where another community doesn't have any of that or might wait weeks for that. So there's a lot of challenges, you know, in different communities and in different hospitals. The sort of challenges you know in different communities and in different hospitals, the sort of people that you see, and even you know, the cultures in the hospital can be different as well, you know. So yeah, just very different, very different. Lots of variety.
Sam Miklos:What would you say is the greatest challenge that you've seen, I guess, in terms of working as a physio in these communities? Like you know, if there's physios listening who are interested in this kind of work.
Judy Chesney:What's something that they should know that's maybe a little bit difficult or that you maybe didn't expect would be challenging from a clinical or professional perspective. I think remote communities, particularly even Indigenous communities, suffer from lack of resources, and that might mean that anything from just your physical resources like wheelchairs and things like that but even you can't get home modifications done, or else maintenance of equipment is very difficult, or you might not have what you need. You might not even have the other staff members that you need. You might be the only physiotherapist there, but they haven't got a speech pathologist and they don't have a dietician, they don't have an occupational therapist, or there's no nursing staff that can go out and help someone in their home their home, you know so.
Judy Chesney:So it's that kind of um that kind of difficulty in terms of a professional thing is that you, you have to be ready to kind of, you know, go well, I haven't got what I need so what can I? Do with what I've got.
Kate Coomber:Yeah, so that's really the challenge, yeah, and aside from, perhaps you know, extra funding and things like that, what do you think we can do to help bridge that gap of outcomes? Good question, well, it's a big one, isn't it?
Judy Chesney:and I think there's no I think governments all over the world have been trying to do that. They either throw money at it or throw resources at it, or make a new department, everything, everything else. I think the thing, as I said often, you can't get the staff there. So getting staff in a place in the first place is the first thing, and then those staff can start to identify the things that they need, where the funding should be spent. So if you can get professionals to take positions in rural and they're committed to the rural community, then they can actually start to go. You know what we need is more community nurses, or what we need is, you know, four-wheel drive wheelchairs, or what we need is, you know, ramps so that they can actually. Or what we need is, you know, ramps so that they can actually. Or what we need is, you know, a vehicle that will bring the people in from the communities, you know, so they can actually start to identify how they can deliver their services better. You know.
Kate Coomber:This information is so helpful to people and I think it sounds like we really need the right people in these communities who have that mindset, who have that level of understanding, to really have that impact which I think, just sharing your stories today is really going to help that.
Judy Chesney:And I think the other thing and this is something that I learned in East Timor when I was there is that you have to have people who are prepared to listen to the community about what they need, because often you can go in there as a professional and go well, I can see that what you need is a new house, you know, with all the access, but that may not be the priority for those people. You know they might have a different priority, you know. Maybe they just want new shoes or food in their bellies or something else you know. So I think it's getting that conversation going with the community and the people that live there and the people that know them to actually start identifying the things that are priorities for the community, yeah, and that real holistic approach.
Judy Chesney:Yeah.
Kate Coomber:Every episode, we're donating $500 to a charity of our guest choice, judy, where is that going for you today?
Judy Chesney:I'm not sure that this qualifies for what you say, but I would nominate the St George Triathlon Club.
Judy Chesney:So, St George is a little community of about 3,000 people and the triathlon club is run by volunteers and they do amazing things. You know they do a whole event where people from miles around come to the event and it's all you know. And people from the community put on, you know, sausage sizzles and there's little prizes for kids on their bikes and each Sunday they also run events and things to where the kids get involved, where the kids get involved. So they've really got a good focus on bringing activity and sport and involvement to that very small community. You know they do bike rides through the week and the doctors get involved and there's prizes for, you know, teams.
Judy Chesney:I think two of the doctors' teams won this last event that they run, you know, so they're just. It would be wonderful. Because you know I said to them oh, you're putting out medals and things. You know I said, oh, no, we don't have enough money for medals. You know, and I just think you know, to keep these people interested in being able to keep that focus on community activity and it's so important for health and wellbeing and mental health and everything else. That would be a real bonus to them.
Sam Miklos:yeah, that's a great choice, judy. I think you know what you've spoken to. There is, you know it's so about keeping the focus on the community, and you know you've shone a light on a number of communities that you've worked, worked in, and I think if we've got physiotherapists that listen to this episode, I'm sure there would be many that would be inspired to come into these communities and, at the end of the day, that's what we need, right? That's the first step that you've pointed out is, if we could just get more healthcare professionals to to take a leap into a different community and maybe go back there a couple of times and get that continuity, it'll just start to make a difference.
Judy Chesney:Well, it's amazing how many people who start off doing a locum end up as a permanent resident.
Sam Miklos:This is exactly right, you know.
Judy Chesney:so yeah, it does happen.
Sam Miklos:And that's the end goal right, getting you know the right people in the right places. So thank you so much for your time today. We've so enjoyed hearing about your journey and, yeah, enjoy your time down in the ski fields. That sounds fabulous. I'm trying not to break a leg. Yeah, I was going to say just stay safe and enjoy it. Stay safe, I will. I will Thank you so much, judy. Thanks, judy, okay, thank you Bye. Thanks for listening. Don't forget to share, rate and review. This allows us to reach more people and share more incredible stories. Click the follow or subscribe button to ensure you never miss an episode. Thank you.
