Kerbside Conversations: Alessia Restiglian

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

In this conversation, Alessia Restiglian shares her journey as a recent graduate in paramedicine, discussing her experiences transitioning from education to her role at Ambulance Victoria. She reflects on the challenges of the hiring process, the importance of staying engaged during the job search, and her aspirations for future research in the field. The conversation highlights the significance of interpersonal skills in paramedicine and the value of practical experience in shaping a successful career. 

Transcript

Laura Hirello: So to get us started, can you tell me what your name is, where you're from, and what your current primary role is? 

Alessia Restiglian: Absolutely. So my name's Alessia, I'm from Victoria and my primary role currently is I'm in my month four of my graduate position with Ambulance Victoria. 

Laura Hirello: Okay, So you're in month four of your sort of big ambulance job. Is it everything you dreamed it would be? 

Alessia Restiglian: Absolutely, which is such a relief after studying for so long you're like, okay cool. It's fine. It's what I wanted to do. So it's just it's the best. It's the best job in the world already. 

Laura Hirello: Okay, that's very reassuring to hear. But now I'm going to ask you about the tedious process of getting hired and sort of that transition between school and actually starting on road. So did you want to tell us a little bit about what your path has looked like? 

Alessia Restiglian: Yeah, absolutely. So I graduated from my full-time bachelor's in 2023 was when we finished. I applied to that jurisdictional ambulance service pretty much straight away and just awaited my results to finalise the process and I waited 16 months before I got my offer. There, as I feel like every other student says, there's not really a lot of clarity in terms of when you're going to get hired. So it's just kind of go on as life per usual, see what you can manage in the meantime. I was really, really fortunate that pretty much straight away I got offered a job at Monash to come as a teaching associate. So I helped primarily for the first semester, Brendan Shannon set up the master's course of paramedic practitioners. So that was a fantastic and really unique opportunity I had. And then filtering into semester two, I took a primary teaching associate for tutorials in different first year units. So that occupied a lot of my time. And somehow I decided to do an honours degree in amongst all that. I did it for one year full time and got some exciting results out of it which has just been published recently. 

Laura Hirello: That is very exciting. Congratulations on your publication. Do you think you'll do more research so that like that little taste of research and honors are you like absolutely not never again or are you because like that's what a lot of people and like totally fair as a researcher I understand that reaction. 

Alessia Restiglian: That was kind of the reaction I had prior to going in. I didn't have any desire to do an honours to begin with. I honestly didn't really know what it consisted of. So it came to fruition from the work I was doing with Brendan. We were looking into things. I was having to research anyway. And he proposed the idea. It was already three weeks into the semester. It's like, look, you're already doing half the work for it. Do you potentially want to do an honours? And it kind of just stemmed from there. Now I was really, really lucky to graduate with first class honours, so I've got a PhD hopefully waiting for me if I want to take it. So that's definitely in the back of my mind and I'm pushing it further and further back. I think I definitely want to and I keep having this desire strongly to go and do it. It's just I'm wanting to have some time in the jurisdictional service to begin with so that I have a lot of experience that I can actually draw on when it comes to doing a PhD later so I can understand what I'm writing about as well. So I can bring in both perspectives from a little bit of academic that I've already started dipping my toe in, as well as having that exposure from being an on-road paramedic. It's there, it's just a in the future thing, but I think I will come back into research for sure. 

Laura Hirello: I think that's great. I always advocate for taking breaks from school to work and I think that's good and academia will always be there. so it absolutely makes sense to that you want to get in there and solidify the skills to actually do the job. Yeah 

Alessia Restiglian: It's been so long working for it. 

Laura Hirello: And like get into it and enjoy it and They you know when you're ready to maybe step back or take a break from it They you go and like switch into something else makes total sense. So it sounds like it went super well for you and you had like all this stuff that you were doing but do you remember like the can you speak to at all the experience of like not knowing what your career is going to look like? 

Alessia Restiglian: Yeah, absolutely. So stressful. So stress inducing. I know that it's not an AV secluded issue. it is for jurisdictional ambulance services is unfortunately just a period of the not knowing. So it's not singular just to the organization that I work for. But it's really, it's hard not to have that immediate transition into it. I think prior to going through paramedicine, you kind of have an expectation, your trajectory in your life that you do your schooling, They you might go off and do a gap year or you go straight into university and that filters straight into a job. So to not have that be the actuality and the reality of most paramedic students is quite a difficult concept to grasp and then live out. So yeah, there are moments where like it would have been nice to filter off casual employment and go straight into full time after you do like, tick all the boxes of what you're supposed to do in life. But I think in saying that when you start at university from pretty much year one, I know with Monash that I can only represent the facilitators there do a really good job in setting you up for the reality of it whilst not making you fearful of what's going to come. They just don't want to set expectations really high and They you seclude all of your options down to just being singular. They make sure that you're well informed to be able to set yourself up for the best success in this interim period of transitioning from studying to getting a job. 

Laura Hirello: No, that makes sense. So do you have any recommendations for people who are graduating as to how to stay engaged with the profession and the work so they don't feel like they're sort of really far away from this thing they train for while they're waiting to sort of start their actual job? 

Alessia Restiglian: Yeah, absolutely. I think people sort of jump into the mindset of I have to get a job that's within the health industry. I don't think that's relevant at all. I think in most jurisdictions, they set you up really, really well in your grad year to revise all the things and your knowledge is there. Like regardless of how you were as a student, there's always things that you absorb going back onto it. You realize that you took in a lot more than you may think you did. So you don't need to work so, so hard to try and ensure that you're ready for this job in terms of clinically, I think maintaining those interactions with patients. So if your job is just something where you have customer support or retail or anything where you're just engaging in talking to people, I find that is the best transition into this role as that's what you're focused and primarily thinking of when you're transitioning. For the interim gap and like how to, I think that your registration kind of requires you to maintain some level of upkeep anyway for your AHPRA registration having to do set amount of CPD hours every single year. That kind of facilitates itself in a way. I don't think it's an active process that you really have to stay on top of because the reality of paramedicine having a bit of a gap between studying and then working is known. So all these jurisdictions have actually already implemented a really fantastic grad year to build you back up to that fully qualified paramedic by the end of it. 

Laura Hirello: Yeah, I think that's such a good point that like it's not just about sort of what we think of as specific paramedic skills or medical skills. So much of the job is that sort of talking to people and like de-escalation and filling gaps and calming people down and so much of that. Yeah, you can practice. in other ways. 

Alessia Restiglian: Yeah, it's those everyday conflicts that you have and the problem solving that you don't even pay any attention towards because it's so normalized. Those are things you're going to rely on subconsciously when you go into this profession. 

Laura Hirello: Absolutely. Have you started working night shifts yet? Okay. 

Alessia Restiglian: No, thank god. I'm waiting of course but I'm very lucky that I don't do it for the first six months. 

Laura Hirello: So normally I would ask sort of what do you do on night shifts to get yourself through? Can I ask, do you know? So it's going to be a learning process. 

Alessia Restiglian: Yeah, it's gonna be quite the curve. It's gonna be quite like my sleep, so it's gonna be quite the challenge. 

Laura Hirello: All right, well thank you so much for chatting with me and I hope that you enjoy your time at the conference. 

Alessia Restiglian: Thanks so much Laura, appreciate it.