Work – Harrison Hansford

My lessons from 400 hours of clinical placement

Last week I finished my final year placements, 400 hours of them. This was a massive relief and burden lifted off my shoulders because I was there from 9-5 four days a week, which is a lot when you’re not getting paid. During this time I learned a lot, and not just about being an exercise physiologist, but about being a better human. This blog will be a summary of what I learned with each one after this expanding on these learnings and how I came about them.

My first placement was in Cardiac Rehab within a hospital and this was interesting because we began during COVID so we weren’t seeing patients for 12 weeks (out of a 15 weeks placement). This meant that we spent a lot of time working within the hospital system, it was here that I got exposed to the level of hierarchy which makes it up.

My lessons were:

I don’t like a hierarchy where you get looked down up in a ‘lower’ position, or have to act differently with people in higher positions than you
I saw how hard it is physically but more-so psychologically going through a heart attack or similar cardiovascular event.
I realised how preventable conditions such as cardiovascular disease aren’t necessarily the people’s fault per-se, but there were many societal and personal factors which lead to the development of these conditions

My next placement was across 5 different mental health wards, all dealing with severe mental illness, that is, schizophrenia, psychosis and bipolar. These ranged from intensive care for the most acute patients across the district to a rehabilitation facility which was less acute and more focussed on improving function. My lessons were:

Growth happens quickest when you’re furthest out of your comfort zone.
Never assume, ever
You need to ask personal questions, and people often respond well to them
You get back what you put in
In a job you need to have the buy in from the people who really matter
Sometimes you just need to play the game
Take your breaks
Just because it’s the status quo doesn’t mean it’s right

My final placement which I only did a few hours at was in a clinic with a predominately older population and a very rigid set of expectations of how you should act. This was interesting because I don’t work well in rigid environments typically, and here it could be very demoralising because did not necessarily need to use our clinical judgements much at all, and you could easily bludge.

My one lesson from this placement was:

Everything is what you make it.

These are all quite brief and pertain to not only being an exercise physiologist but any working person. Placement was an amazing opportunity to rapidly learn new things and adjust to different styles of working. Overall I think this was where I really grew as a person this year, particularly in my mental health placement because of the challenges it put onto me. I would love to know what other experiences people have had that have lead to some insight into work or life more broadly.

The Yearly Review

I’ve talked previously about the power of the weekly review, looking back at your week and seeing how it was. Today I did my yearly review, looking back on my goals for the year and grading myself on how I went. I would also reflect on the goals and justify to myself the grade I got. This was a really enjoyable experience. I blocked out 2 hours in my afternoon and just reflected on my year.

I realised that I actually have had a great year, I have grown so much as a person, which is one of my biggest indicators of success. I also realised what the gaps in my focus have been.

The reason I think that everyone should be doing this or something similar is that it allows you to realise what you have achieved or haven’t achieved. This can be lost in the moment when you’re only reflecting day to day or even week to week. I believe that examining your life is crucial to being successful and growing as a person.

New Grad Energy

I was discussing with a friend about my time at one of my placements in a mental health ward and I was talking about how much I cared about the patients and was passionate about helping them and how it was sad to be leaving them. He mentioned that I was like that because I’m still very new to the job and because of that I had what he called “new grad energy” and wasn’t jaded by the system yet. I don’t think that putting in effort to the patients and your job should be something out of the ordinary, it shouldn’t be something the diminishes over time, if it does you’re likely just in the wrong job.

A good team makes a good job

I’m approaching the end of my placement at a Mental Health unit and whilst I’m so ready to not have to go in 4 days a week I don’t want to go. I haven’t fully thought through why that is but I think it’s because I’ve really formed good connections with many of the patients and staff.

I remember walking in in my first week and being told the horror stories of violence and how intense the workplace is and asked my supervisor why anyone would want to work in mental health. He said it was because a high intensity environment creates a highly connected team, which makes it all worth it. I’m beginning to really see that and understand what he meant by it. This reinforces the fact that a good team makes any job worthwhile and it’s definitely a major lesson I’ve learned on this placement when going for future jobs.

Days off

I vowed to take my Saturday off studying, I had just submitted my final assignment and ostensibly had nothing to do. I was going to chill out and just take the day off. That was great until I couldn’t help but jump back on R to do some more coding for my manuscript which we’re planning on publishing soon.

It wasn’t because I was bored, I just couldn’t help myself. I realised I had nothing else to fill the void. I realised I didn’t have any hobbies. Being me, I sat down on Sunday and tried to brainstorm what hobbies I should have, which obviously is ridiculous.

I realised I haven’t put any time aside for myself to think and enjoy myself. I need to do more of that, or do less of everything else and have some blank time, not filling every minute with tasks. No conclusion other than my own realisation that there can be such a thing as too much ‘productivity’, which when your task ends, leaves you feeling pretty empty.

Why are you working so hard?

This is a question I’ve always dismissed because I was studying and wasn’t really working. Recently this has changed since I’ve been on placement almost full time. I’m now, for the first time, spending the vast majority of my time working. I’ve also seen the time I spend doing things like going to the gym, spending time helping around the house and importantly sleeping has all decreased, which I’m not happy about. This has made me really consider what I want my future work life to look like, as you saw in my previous post about not working full time.

I think this is a question which people don’t ask themselves enough. The most common answer is, I’m sure, to earn a lot of money and then be able to retire (whatever that means) and travel, or do whatever it is they enjoy. This answer is flawed, in many ways, but it’s also a trap. You’re unlikely to just replicate your desires now, in 20, 30 or 40 years time, whenever it is, you’re values will change and you wont be able to re-coup those lost years working your ass off. An extreme example of the converse of this is to always be semi-retired, working remotely or earning money through passive income, living in a place with very low costs. Tim Ferriss shows that this isn’t as difficult as it sounds, that you can live well for 20-30k per year in a lower income country like Vietnam or Brazil. This is an extreme example, but an interesting idea. What if you weren’t deferring your life for this amazing period we call retirement but lived doing whatever it is you truly love doing, every day.

The other option, and in my opinion the ideal option is that you love doing your job every day AND it pays very well, so you can afford to go part time as soon as possible. This is something I don’t want to assume will happen because I think it’s so rare and don’t want to just jump on the corporate hamster wheel seeking this.

I’m yet to really figure out what it is that I really want to be doing, I’m not sure I ever will. My heuristic for making life decisions is, what will I enjoy most in the short term, its fared me well so far. Despite this, I feel as though I’m getting drawn more and more to what I think I should do rather than what I want to do. I have no answers, other than to continue asking myself the question “do I really enjoy what I’m doing?” The way I help myself answer that is asking if I’d do it for free, and so far, I have been doing it for free and the answer is still yes.

My biggest worry is convincing myself I like what I’m doing and not spending time doing the things I love and I think this should be the worry of most people. So why are you working so hard, and is that really the path you want to continue going down?

Full-time work and why I’m trying to avoid it

Making money has been a goal of mine ever since I was about 12, when I made my own business cards on powerpoint for my new dog walking business. Then at 14, I began tie dying shirts, which was more successful and I made my first real amount of money.

I never wanted to work at McDonald’s or any other typical job a young teenager works because I heard my friends complaining about poor pay and long hours, and I think this sentiment has endured for me. To this day I still don’t want to have to go into work 5 days a week, I want to have flexibility. Moreover I want to be doing something I love and I don’t think you can love having to go into work every day.

So I don’t want to have to work full-time, great, but how do I achieve that? It’s not like I can say oh yeah I’ll just work part-time for the rest of my life, unless I happen to marry rich (fingers crossed!). I need a strategy to make up the lost income which comes from not working full-time.

I’m yet to figure out how I will make up that lost income, with many ideas but no action so far. I was listening to a podcast with Austin Kleon (the author of Show your work!) and he said “you may have several passions and by doing all of them you may not have a career, but you’ll have a good life.” This really resonated with me because I feel that if I went into a full-time job I would strive to progress in that, jumping on the hamster wheel like everyone else to continue to get pay rises and jostle for positions. I don’t want that. I want time to focus on what I really enjoy doing, writing, learning new things, having ideas, teaching people, having in depth discussions and exercising.

I’ve noticed since I’ve been at my placement 4 days a week and studying the rest that the time I spend doing these things has reduced significantly. So I don’t yet have a solution on how to recoup the income gap between part time work and a full-time career, maybe it is something I don’t even know exists yet. I trust that if I keep my options open, and continue to work hard, opportunities will present themselves to me. Maybe that belief is naive, maybe I do have to work full-time, but I don’t think it is.

This also raises a thought reminiscent of ‘The Four-Hour Work Week,‘ how much money do you really need to be happy and live the life you want, but that’s a conversation for another blog post.

I feel like this is something unique to me, this whole desire to not work full-time, but at the same time I feel it should be universal, so I’m interested to hear others thoughts on this and start a conversation about work and why we actually do it.

Aside: To challenge myself to continue writing and doing things I love I’ve set myself a challenge, 50 days, 50 blog posts. There are 50 days left in the year, and I want to write more, so I’m going to set aside some time every day to sit down and write, something, anything.