Kerbside Conversations: Cam Rota

Welcome to Kerbside Conversations – the College’s podcast capturing authentic voices and stories from across the world of paramedicine.

This conversation explores the themes of equitable care in healthcare, emphasizing the importance of confidence, the acceptance of mistakes, and the transformational journey that healthcare professionals undergo. It highlights that anyone can provide equitable care and that the process is ongoing, allowing for growth and learning along the way. 

Transcript

Laura Hirello: All right. So here we are at a special gala edition of Kerbside Conversations. And so to get us started, why don't you tell me who you are, where you're from, and what your current role is.

Cam Rota: Of course, no worries. Kia ora everyone and nice to meet you. My name is Cam and currently I'm on the St John, Hato Hone St John New Zealand. It's the National Māori Health and Equity Lead Ambulance Services. What a mouthful. But it's an amalgamation essentially of ambulance operations and kind of services together.

Laura Hirello: And how long you been doing that?

Cam Rota: So I've been doing bits of it for kind of the last two to three years, but officially in this role I've actually started in the last two months. But I've held multiple roles within the organisation, kind of doing bits and pieces of the current role that I'm in now. But this time I'm now full time.

Laura Hirello: Oh, congratulations. From what I've read, you are quite the champion for diversity and diversity equity inclusion sort of projects within your service. And I feel like one of the challenges and challenge me on this one of the challenges of these types of projects is lots of times people want to be more equitable in their practice, but they don't really know how to get started with it. Are there approaches that you recommend?

Cam Rota: I don't think. I think the biggest thing for me, especially in my delivery, I do a lot of internal training for our paramedics, all of our clinicians and the rest of the directorate. You've got to be comfortable and the only way that you can be comfortable is to initially be uncomfortable, you need to modernize the context as well so that people understand, lots of the conversations are, this happened this many years ago, if we talk about things like colonization. But if you modernize it and make it fun to learn, then people aren't so scared, right?

Cam Rota: When I learnt Māori I had no knowledge of it three years ago. But when I studied it, you became uncomfortable to learn it. So the more times that you did it, and the more engaging and fun it was, the more relaxed you felt. So I think anyone has the ability to provide equitable care. And I know that we do it anyway. But it's just having the confidence. And you're allowed to make a mistake. You never have to reach the end goal tomorrow. It's all about the sort of transformational journey that you complete to get to that point. So yeah, I suppose they're making it fun. It's my biggest thing.

Laura Hirello: I think that people are so nervous to make mistakes that often they won't even make a start. And that actually turns out to be the biggest issue that that's where we end up.

Cam Rota: And it's all on, like we talk about mistrust with patient care, right? Bad experiences, they don't trust the service, whoever that may be. But it's also the same with learners. So if you create a horrible learning environment, that person might come back and then they'll most likely be on the defensive. So the more welcoming you make it and the more engaging and more fun it is to throw a bit of humor in there, the more likely they're going to come back. Because they know they're not going to get in trouble. Absolutely.

Laura Hirello: And so I think it's really interesting because as we see new paramedics come through and they're sort of the most educated that we've ever seen, which is fantastic, and they also have the sort of most knowledge of equity and culturally sensitive care. And they're sort of entering these workforces where they're working with people who may not have that background education and might not understand those values. Do you have any sort of advice or strategies for younger paramedics when they find themselves in new situations?

Cam Rota: Yeah, I think it's providing real life examples, right? If you're an ambo in my case, you learn more on experience. And I suppose when you're talking to senior clinicians, you kind of want to know the ins and outs of different jobs, keeping in mind patient confidentiality, but you want to know, right, it's for your own learning, and it's interesting. So the same thing, our senior paramedics, especially our critical care and extended care paramedics, they know that they're in a teaching position, so they just do it naturally. But I suppose, you have to fully understand what it is and there's a difference of learning things through university or through paperwork but putting the stuff that you've learned into action and witnessing it firsthand gives you a deeper understanding of what it actually means, equity etc. Especially like if you look at remote areas as well we all can say remote areas struggle but until you put yourself in those areas and sit with families and listen to the struggles is when you understand so get out there as much as you can.

Laura Hirello: Absolutely.

Cam Rota: It's one thing to just know that they struggle and then it's a whole different thing to actually see it and to understand what the word struggle means and what specifically are we talking about for these instances. And just bring that along. Totally, because we need to kind of step away from the tick-box and stuff, right? Because you can go, well I've learned about equity and I've learned about equality, so technically I've done the required things, right? But that's the tick-box exercise. So you get the real authentic connections and genuine partnerships and understanding of which we go out there.

Laura Hirello: Okay, and our final question for you. So what is your night shift guilty pleasure? So you're working a night shift, what do you do to make yourself feel a little bit better?

Cam Rota: Do you know what's funny? So I don't work night shifts now but when I did I worked in Auckland Central and there's only one McDonald's that fits the ambulance through the drive through and it's the one out of New Lynn so we would go there all the time, two maybe three times in a night. We're on a health bus but it is McDonald's because it's the easiest thing to get to. Totally, totally.

Laura Hirello: I maintain, I mean health is a bit of a... That's what you need to get through that. Well thank you so much for chatting with me. Have a great time at the conference.

Cam Rota: Have a good one.