EHO Knows: Cruise Control Part one w/ Cameron Smith

Shane: [00:00:00] just sit right back and you’ll hear a tale, a tale of a Fateful Trip. I’m not gonna even attempt to sing that or do anything else, but instead I’m gonna bring back Cameron Smith, who, um, in a previous episode was flooded, surrounded by a whole stack of water. And it’s an awesome story about what you do when you’re thrown in the deep end, literally in a flood, and you do what you are never trained to do, but you made such a huge difference. Um, now drying himself up and, um, and he’s sitting back and so what does he do instead? He goes, cruising. So Cameron, welcome back to EHO Nose.

Cameron: It’s a pleasure to be here and welcome everybody.

Shane: Okay, so we literally left you, you know, high and dry. Everything’s good. Um, why did you decide to. on a cruise ship, and we’re not talking about just going for short holiday. We’re talking about EHO full on months and months at sea. Why? Just [00:01:00] why

Cameron: Strangely enough, um, I knew an environmental health officer who worked, uh, in Gibraltar and he, he actually text me saying he’d just got this new job working for Carnival Cruise Lines as a public health officer. So he, and he said, oh look, we’ve got other jobs going. You might wanna have a look at that.

’cause he knew, basically as a result, the flood, I was a bit on the, I was burnt out to be honest, and I was looking for something different, something challenging. And when I looked at the job for Princess Cruise lines, I went, oh my God, how exciting is that to go work on the love bowl and do what you love best, which is doing EHO stuff.

Shane: and year are we talking about?

Cameron: Uh, let’s see. The flood was 20, 22, 6 months after that. So it’s still 2022.

Shane: So COVID, you are gonna make life easy and go on a cruise ship and, uh, do what an EHO does.

for

burnout, let’s do something different.

Cameron: Yeah. The Ruby Princess. Very interesting [00:02:00] story there. Did I get hammered being an Australian over that one when I got there and the way that they were unfairly treated by the, the New South Wales government, because again, there was the they blamed the New South Wales government for letting people off in the first place, which caused the outbreak in Sydney.

So it was actually, they believe it was New South Wales health negligence that caused the problem, not their, their systems. So it was interesting hearing the other side of the story.

Shane: and because you are the Australian, you are the, um, symbol of everything evil then,

Cameron: Basically part of the evil empire. Absolutely.

Shane: So you decide to be, become an EHO on a cruise ship. Um, so you rock up on day one and you are automatically put onto a cruise ship and set off to do your stuff. Um, I know that’s not the case ’cause I’ve heard you talk.

Um, what happens? You, you sign up and you become

Cameron: Well, once he gets.

Shane: on a cruise ship. What’s the

Cameron: Absolutely. Well, the process is you go through multiple rounds of [00:03:00] interviews to start with. So you start with HR in the general field of what’s your experience, what’s your knowledge, what’s your educational background? Yeah. Like most job interviews. But the second part of it is you actually go before the public health team.

So that’s based in Los Angeles, and you go for the director of public health, along with the senior public health officers, which are all shoreside. And you basically grilled on your skills and knowledge where they will be asking you questions about what you know about water, public health, food safety, um.

Public health in terms of skin penetration, pest control. So you get a good grilling of and what your experience is. Now, one of the biggest challenges is you’re not working with Australian legislation and regulations. You’re actually working with a totally different piece of, uh, legislation, which is put out by the CDC or the Center of Disease Control and Prevention in the USA.

So you are [00:04:00] instantly going well, you’re at disadvantage if you dunno anything about that documentation. Luckily, I was given a heads up. By the other EHO who suggested I look at this job to look at those documents first before I got to my interview stage, because it’s a very prescriptive document. So it does detail how high something has to be off the deck.

It does specifically say what your temperature needs to be at a hand basin. It specifically says what the lighting level has to be at 75 centimeters off the deck when you’re working somewhere. So it’s a very detailed document for the simple fact is that when you’re working with people from all around the world, you need one common piece of information.

It can’t be subjective and it can’t be open to interpretation. Because when one PHO, sorry, public health officer, that’s just the way we speak. PHO says one thing. The crew will run with that forever in a day. Cameron said. Cameron said, I’ll guarantee it, but if you go, but the book [00:05:00] says there’s no argument.

Shane: how experienced do you think you need to be to apply in the first place? Like, can a graduate just rock up and say, fantastic, I’m gonna work on cruise ships, or, you know, do you need to clock up a couple years experience? What’s your recommendation?

Cameron: You need to, they look at anybody with at least, uh, two to three years of, uh, ship experience. Now that means you can work your way up through the ranks on onboard ship, so you can work in the galley, you can work in the scull area, you can work in housekeeping and actually work your way towards becoming a public health officer.

The alternative is if you’ve got five plus years of experience working in government regulatory agencies, or working in private industry as an auditor in food or public health, they also take that into consideration.

Shane: Okay, so, um, basically five years experience as an EHO, and, um, and you are close to good to go read the document, apply, be grilled, [00:06:00]

Cameron: Absolutely,

Shane: then they accept you. Yeah.

Cameron: absolutely.

Shane: so you’re accepted. one. What happens?

Cameron: intensive training for a month. So they get together, all the new public health officers together. They give you a very experienced trainer who will then absolutely grind you into the ground with, with documentations, policies, procedures, how to, how to read the different, uh, manuals coupled with how to actually write the reports.

for some of us, we had to learn Fahrenheit versus Celsius, uh, just because the Americans love cel, uh, Fahrenheit. So there’s a few crossovers there, but they need to make sure that everybody is looking at the same thing and how to actually understand what’s required. Working on the ship is very different to working on land.

The standards are much higher than what you would see on land in Australia. So suddenly, what’s clo And again, being the token Australian, uh, she’ll be right. She’ll be good enough. Does not cut it. They, and [00:07:00] again, that was quoted to me from day one. They go, we know you’re Australian. Still be right. It is not gonna work here.

It must be. So it’s, it’s a bit of a culture shock going, ah, I should be right. That’s close enough. No. the stands are really high.

Shane: so how many people were in the, um, bootcamp with you?

Cameron: Uh, there was four of us, So yeah,

Shane: And we’re talking about bootcamp at sea on a boat.

Cameron: yep. Absolutely. Absolutely. Uh, my first assignment was aboard the Royal Princess for a month. So basically it was sailing up and down the west coast of the USA between Los Angeles and um, Mexico, Tijuana.

Shane: what time were you getting

Cameron: we kick off work every morning at around seven 30, but we would go through till around. This is training, mind you, not, not a regular working day, but we’d go through, around till about, uh, five o’clock. So seven 30 till about five each day out, hour, you know, half an hour for breakfast, hour for lunch.

Uh, pretty stock standard day.

Shane: Okay. you are, you are [00:08:00] trained EHO, what can they teach you at sea that you don’t know already? Like why bother with the training?

Cameron: It was about the interpretation of looking at the, the ma, the actual manual itself, and looking at. the Vessel Sanitation Program manual and how to actually understand it, but also how to write the reports because again, the u the US uses a scoring system similar to the New South Wales, uh, does with their scores on doors.

So how to take away points while interpreting what has to be met, how many findings you would need to go, well, we’re now excl explaining this from a one point penalty up to a potentially a five point penalty because. Essentially, if a score of less than 86 is achieved by a ship, the ship literally does not sail.

So it’s very important to be giving the captain and senior management an accurate gauge on a regular weekly basis of how the ship is faring [00:09:00] in terms of its hygiene, public health criteria in that, because random audits are undertaken by the Canadian government, the US government, uh, the Peruvian government, multiple governments do inspections and they all score the ships.

And failing those inspections is very expensive for a ship to be locked in dock for 24 hours, if not longer, because they’ve failed a health inspection

Shane: Okay, so we’ve got scores on doors, so we’re talking about scores on doors, on overdrive.

Cameron: Hmm.

Shane: what’s something that’ll give? what’s a big scorer on, terms of penalties?

Cameron: Medical record keeping. Filing to adequately, um. Identify any ship person. So any crew member who has not self presented to the medical bay, that they may have some sort of symptom or communicable disease such as acute gastroenteritis that will score poorly. So there is a requirement that within one hour of the [00:10:00] onset of any symptoms, a f uh, a food handler or a non-food handler must present themselves to medical to ensure that the ship’s doctor and staff can assess this person because if they are deemed to have acute gastroenteritis or symptoms like that, they are quarantined because.

A GA or acute gastro rice is incredibly communicable abor ship. So this can get outta control very rapidly. So if a, if a food handler decides that he’s gonna go working, he works most of his ship, then thinks, oh, I’m getting a, I’m getting stomach cramped. I’ve been to the toilet a few times, but I’ll keep still handling food.

It’s all good. Um, and then later that 12 hours later, he then goes to medical saying, oh look, I’ve got an upset stomach and I’ve been got diarrhea. And they say, well, when did this happen? He goes 12 hours ago. And they go, you’ve, you’ve contaminated this area that potentially has the potential to spread through the ship and affect other crew mates as well as guests.

So that one there, the C, d, C and so on, see that as one of the, a very serious breach [00:11:00] that we are not ensuring that the communicable diseases are under control.

Shane: So we’re talking about post COVID, we’re talking about post Ruby Princess. Um,

Cameron: Hmm.

Shane: yeah, that concept of you sneeze, you report it, um, you know, you got, got gastro, you just zero tolerance. You can’t

Cameron: Zero to zero tolerance for gastro. Yeah, absolutely. And it’s a stackable offense. It could potentially have you terminated and sent home end of contract that because it has high ramifications to really put the ship in danger. Because if you start having an, an outbreak, once you get to more than 2% of the crew, uh, presenting with gastro symptoms, that’s notifiable to the CDC or the whichever country you happen to be by, uh, near.

So if you’re near Italy or um, Spain or some of that, you need to then report to the closest medical facility that you have this problem, which can then put, potentially put the ship into quarantine and they won’t allow you to necessarily dock.

Shane: how many crew are on a ship?

Cameron: [00:12:00] challenging question depending on the ship you’re on. So the, uh, the Royal Princess had a crew of 1700, uh, with a carrying capacity of around 4,500 guests. Later on I was working for Seaborne that went down to a crew of only 600 with a, a guest compliment of over, just over a thousand.

Shane: Okay, so 1700, 2%, 34 people. So 35th person,

Cameron: Mm-hmm.

Shane: pukes, craps, whatever.

Cameron: We, actually had, we, we had one day where the senior doctor and I were sitting there watching the clock and we were counting it down to midday. ’cause at midday We could remove two people from that percentage because the numbers that skyrocketed up.

’cause as long as we stayed under 2%, we were fine. But if we got one more case, we were at that stage where we had to then notify the nearest landmass that yes, we had, we, we’d exceed that reason and we’d have to go to a much [00:13:00] higher quarantine level,

Shane: which is also then really interesting because like you’ve got a zero tolerance for reporting, but if you report, you then ground the ship

Cameron: potentially, potentially to.

Shane: so there you go. Okay. So, um, probably good segue in terms of the amount of power you have. Um, you’ve got the ability to, um, to shut down a ship if you wanted to. Um, so what’s your rank?

Cameron: two and a half stripes. So that’s a, it’s a fairly senior rank, so when you get to three stripes, essentially you’re, you are, um, in charge of departments. so, most people don’t argue with you. It’s only basically senior management that’ll argue with you, uh, for that reason. And that’s why it’s given such a serious rank, because it’s, it’s a case of yes, you are in charge even though you report to the senior doctor and the hotel director.

So you’ve got two bosses, which is always challenging to keep both happy. But at the end of the day, your recommendations go to the senior doctor. And the senior doctor is the one who, who is the, does [00:14:00] the yay or the nays, um, that no ship can sail without a senior doctor present. You can start without the captain app, it turns out.

But you can’t sail without a senior doctor because he, he, he makes the final determination if he makes the final determination on whether there is a serious outbreak and he is the one responsible to report to Shoreside. It’s his, it’s his ASRS in the sling essentially. So you are the eyes and ears of the senior doctor.

Shane: so you answer to the doctor who is, uh, in one sense the ultimate power, but then you said you also then answer to,

Cameron: The hotel director.

Shane: hospitality

Cameron: Mm.

Shane: hotel

Cameron: So,

Shane: So, uh, so you answer to the two people whose job is to make sure you feel good in the opposite extremes. One is pleasure and one

Cameron: That

Shane: Just making

Cameron: you,

Shane: feel good.

Cameron: you’ve just hit the nail on the head. It, it, it is actually a challenging role because it is a conflict when the senior doctor is advising, we know we need to quarantine people, we need isolation rooms. And the hotel [00:15:00] director’s going, no, no, no. We need people in the cruise because they’re paying money.

We don’t go suddenly shutting rooms down just ’cause you want quarantine rooms, but you go, yes, but, but, but, so yeah, you actually sometimes have a little bit of conflict there about making sure people are enjoying themselves, but also ensuring public health and safety’s managed as well.

Shane: so who, you’ve got 1700 staff, your two and a half striper, you answer to the doctor and hotel guests. Um, how many people are senior to you then? How many? Yeah, three. How many stripes do we go up to?

Cameron: Uh, essentially, well under the captain, you would then have, you’ve got three heads of department. You have the chief engineer, you’ve got the hotel director, and you’ve also got, uh, the staff captain, which is the number two captain on board. So there you three heads of department and therefore stripes each.

You then drop down generally there’s a, couple of unusual three and a half stripes, uh, but they’re very rare. But then essentially three [00:16:00] stripes is your heads of department.

Shane: Okay. Because what I love is like, you are now way up here in terms of, of hierarchy. And so describe your typical day for, you know, one of the most powerful people on the ship. What did you do? And, you know, we’re now talking about you’re on the, the ship, you know, you’re post uh, training. What was a typical day?

Cameron: A typical day was for me, kicked off between seven and seven 30 every morning. I always headed to galley’s first thing in the morning to make sure that, again, chefs were undertaking their, their correct duties in terms of food handling. But time control is very big on shifts. So they’ve got to ensure that they’ve documented and they’ve color coded all their potentially hazardous foods for time control, but also buffets and that have to be labeled for allergens.

So making sure all the information is available to guests before they come in for to dine. Uh, and there’s also the, the, the, the chats on the way through. Guests love seeing [00:17:00] officers and having a two minute chat with ’em as you’re passing through. But also the crew, if they see you out and about, they know you’re looking, they’re more likely to do the right thing.

It’s when they don’t see you and you’re not looking. They have a tendency to cut corners, unfortunately. Like, like anybody, if there’s an easier way or a, it’s a quicker way to do something, they’ll do it. So if you’re there monitoring them or at least talking to them, they can see you. You’re actually interested in what they do.

Um. And that’ll take you through till breakfast time. So breakfast anywhere between eight o’clock and nine o’clock, uh, for a half hour breakfast. But then you’ve got meetings from nine until nine 30 with all, with heads of departments through the hotel. So you’ll have cruise directors, you’ll have head of, um.

Food and beverage bar managers. So basically a get together, uh, and discuss the day’s plans ahead so you actually know what’s going on, what activities are happening. ’cause you may be required to actually be at those events or activities to oversee a food or a drink [00:18:00] or a potential public health issue.

And just to help out sometimes. But also it’s a way to actually find out what’s going on every day, or again, advise the hotel director on potential problems such as I’m also the conduit to senior medical. There we go. Cam, could you please make sure the hotel director’s aware that we have so many people who are actually quarantined, or, yes, these people shall not be dining because they’re in quarantine.

Make sure that they’re on the, the no go to restaurant list, et cetera. ’cause they’re in quarantine. So you become that middleman again to make sure you are representing the medical department. And then the rest of the day is a little bit fluid.

Because the day can also be prized of regular weekly activities. Every week there is a crew drill for evacuation of the ship, so you know that every day, every week, sorry, you will have to lock in. Usually between 10 30 and 1130 you’ll be doing. Evacuation drills with the rest of the crew. That’s not negotiable.

It’s a man, [00:19:00] it’s a mandatory event. Uh, other days you’ll go, oh yeah, today’s this general ship inspection where the captain will be involved. Then your managers will actually go through and do a hygiene check of the ship because they wanna know what’s going on. You accompany them to give advice, but you also have other staff go out to do theirs.

Their reports will come back to you. You then look through them to go, is there anything I need to now chase up for the rest of the week to make sure for next week’s inspection, we’ve hit the nail on the head. So again, you are there to assist those more senior officers and follow their feedback if they think there’s something wrong.

So it’s a team effort.

Shane: Okay, so at this stage it sounds like a middle management job where you’re

Cameron: Absolutely.

Shane: inspecting things, um, just involved in reports after reports. Um, so what’s really good about this is you don’t get your hands dirty.

Cameron: Get your hands pretty dirty at times. Absolutely. Um, again, when it comes to. Recreational water you’ll [00:20:00] go out with, with the pool guys and you will actually take water samples or you’ll watch them take the water samples and make sure they’re doing it properly. Look at their readings, check their data charts that they, the records they’re keeping are actually meeting the actual standards that your core levels or your bromine levels are all within range.

The temperatures are correct. Um, there was some situations where the hot tubs were too hot because the outside temperature is 44 degrees and you go, if it reached a certain temperature, you have to actually shut those facilities down because they’re just too dangerous. So you’re out there monitoring things and being a second eyes and ears for those team members doing that work, as well as making sure you could actually be training those guys to go, oh, you’re new.

Great. I’ll take you through the stuff. Show me what you can do. Let’s go over it and go, yep, I love this work. Or No, hang on. You’ve missed how to take the sample, or You’ve missed what you’re supposed to be recording here. So again. When you have a culture of people from all over the world, literally [00:21:00] you have to see, well, some of them don’t speak English as their first language.

They speak basic English, but it’s still gotta be enough to communicate. But at the same time, they have to understand what is required of them. So sometimes it can be asking questions, watching what they do, give them feedback, talk to their supervisors. So there’s a lot of communication that goes on.

That’s why it’s very hands-on. You are in there all the time being seen because you’re talking and you’re working with the crew mates to make sure you get this right and guests see you doing it. That’s a real positive. Guests love seeing you out there actually going, oh, you’re the public health. Yeah, yeah.

We’re making sure the water’s good for you. Yeah, we’re making sure this is great. And they like that because they get that confidence that actually people care and wanna make sure they’re having a great time.

Shane: Yeah. Um, you were talking about, uh, the diversity of language. Uh, my brother was a, dealer on the ships and, um, so he pointed out

a,

Cameron: look, ships are known for. Trades and trafficking, [00:22:00] it’s a big thing. And, uh, smuggling contraband is taken in. Oh, incredibly seriously.

Uh, there are route, I won’t say routine, I’ll say random inspections of the crew and so on, to make sure there is no contraband being smuggled. It’s quite serious, including counterfeit stuff. Um, you go to Turkey and you can buy Rolexs in every second bloody shop. How many are fake? All of them. But in Turkey to be sold, it’s okay, but the moment you take it out of the country and you try to take it to other countries, you are now smuggling contraband.

So no, that, that you yeah. Bring back counterfeit stuff. Huge, huge penalties. So, no, that, that’s why. So yeah, look, it’s taken very serious. Take look. Drug smuggling is taken very seriously. I know we joke about it, but it is actually something to be very considerate about and we haven’t, we haven’t got to pirates yet.

Shane: Yeah. Yeah, because my, ’cause my brother made the point that, cruise ships are incredibly multicultural, but in the most racist way because you, and you know, you are from Australia, [00:23:00] you’ve got a senior, um, management sort of position. Um, and then as you get lower and lower to the point where you get to the cleaners and whatever you’re just talking about, these are, these are people coming from, uh, third world countries who, um, yeah, income issues. Uh, they’ve got the worst sleeping conditions, they’ve got the, um, the longest hours and all that sort of stuff. And so you really do have a nice cross profile of the world’s, place onboard ships. So, um, so you are now training people who are coming from, not from Australia, um, but from a, um, third world sort of environment, cooking behind the scenes or whatever. So how challenging was it?

Cameron: Oh look, incredibly challenging. And look, I do wanna put the plug in. ’cause look, the Filipino crew members I work with who were galley utilities or cooks or were deckhands, or the South Africans or the Africans, look, those guys were amazing. They worked bloody hard and I, I can’t give any big enough rap for how [00:24:00] hard they genuinely worked and cared about what they did and the people they were with.

Even though you just go for an Australian, you wouldn’t think twice about that work. But these guys work really hard. My hat’s off to them and one of the things I was trained to do was make sure when I was talking to any of the galley utilities, you praise them. They’ve got the shittiest jobs, scrubbing and cleaning, but they’ve also got the most important job to make sure that hygiene and that sanitation as a standard to ensure that the communicable diseases don’t spread.

So if they don’t get it right, then we are in world of, we’re a world of hurt. So it’s one of those things where you go, these people, yeah, worst job, but the most important job. So I look, I can’t, I can’t give much, much more praise. Seriously. They’re amazing.

Shane: and doubling back to, you know, they rely on tips, but if they’re sick, they can’t work and get tips or whatever. And so it is a really interesting mix in terms of just, they have to do a really good job. Um, and if they don’t. They can go horribly, [00:25:00] horribly wrong. Um, so yes. Okay, so you are sampling water, doing kitchen inspections.

What else is part of your job?

Cameron: Pest control. So basically you work with the bosen of the ship. The bosen is the man who’s in charge of all the chemicals. He’s in charge of the team that actually does the pest control. But at the end of the day, the public health officer, the one who makes the decision on what the form of pest control is, how it’ll be done, how it’ll be undertaken.

So he follows those instructions. So you are responsible that, yes, if you’ve got rats on board, if you’ve got cockroach problems, if you’ve got. would borrow problems. Uh, that’s all your decision you need to work out. How do you control it? You can look again, you can seek advice from shore side, which is great, don’t get me wrong.

But it can be very slow responding. So you need to know how to treat, find or to And now part of that comes back to training crew to look for things on the shore. So if your provision master is switched on and I had some great provision masters [00:26:00] and they’d call me, cam, come down, please reject this load of goods because we can see rats have been chewing into it.

Great. I will reject it. Ship won’t take it on board, but it needs, again, the public health officer to reject that food for, again, that risk of we don’t wanna bring pests on board. So pest management, very big, very big problem. Uh, so you’ve got that, you’ve got skin penetration. So you’ve got beauty salons on board.

You’ve got people, you know, nail techs, um, those lovely facilities, people go for hairdressers, et cetera. So you’re looking after all those people as well, as well as doing their inspections. Uh, you are also in charge of doing, doing, doing, doing. Having one of those metal moments, uh, water production, really critical.

The ship has to make its own water or take it on board, on shore. Part of your job is to make sure that the microbiological results are within tolerance as well as how and when it’s released back into the system. So because we make our own water, they have to keep charts and [00:27:00] logs of what, uh, chemicals are used when they take sea water on.

We use reverse osmosis to actually filter the water, get it all basically to a pH of seven, but that water is so pure, we then have to make sure it’s got enough salt put back into it, along with balancing the pH so the body can absorb it again. So there’s a lot of behind the work that the engineers do there, but again, they’re not microbiologists, they don’t fully understand sometimes.

So you need to check their work. And the record keeping records, records, records. There are many records kept for a reason because if something goes wrong, the public health officer’s jobs on the line along with the team that’s looking after it, because if they release water back into the system that’s contaminated or is microbiologically not fit?

It contaminates the entire reserve of water on board. So it, it, look, it’s, it’s, there’s some serious, um, ramifications if you don’t get these things right.

Shane: How many ships did you work [00:28:00] on?

Cameron: look, I worked on one shift. So you work a contract, the contract is four months long and when I say four months long, that’s literally 120 days on the job. So you work from day one through to 120 before you have a day off. Uh, so for me, I ended up working on in my time ’cause I did uh, four contracts.

So four ships,

Shane: so sorry, from a paperwork point of view, then it means that you can effectively jump from ship to ship and you’ve got exactly the same sort of procedures in place. and so that’s the upshot of the sort of job in the sort of training is that universal approach. Um, do ships have their own peculiar quirks?

Cameron: Absolutely. Branding is very big. So if you work for Holland America versus Princess versus Seaborn, uh, versus Carnival, there’s a lot of pride in those particular brands. So yes, if you are a princess staff member and they know you’ve worked for Princess and you go to [00:29:00] Seaborn, they will very quickly tell you, we do it this way versus the way they do it on Princess.

So you have to learn quickly how to adapt to those little nuances, because that’s their brand. So if you say, oh, but I’m Princess, we do it this way. Um, no, no, no, you won’t get very far to the point. Even where I had a notebook, which had the princess brand on it. When I first arrived on Seaborne, the captain said to me, and he was very polite, a lovely guy, but he said, cam, that’s a princess book.

You can’t use that here. And I said, ha, okay. And, and my hotel director said, no, no, cam, he’s being serious. And I went, oh, okay. Because, no, no. We don’t promote other brands. We promote our own brand.

Shane: how many flow paths did you manage to make over your time? We’ll see if this one remains in or out of

Cameron: Uh, thank you. Yeah, look, not so much faux pa. Um, again, learning curve was steep. That’s probably the biggest thing was just not knowing. Getting to my first ship as a solo practitioner, it [00:30:00] is like, where do I start? What do I do? Because that was, you’ve been thrown in the deep end and the hotel director was like, you should know what you’re doing.

Uh, I just had my four weeks of basic training. I’ve just arrived. Uh, hello. We’re working, and don’t me wrong, luckily, after two weeks there was, there was a fleet public health officer coming on board to do an audit, and the hotel director said, Kim, we’ve got this guy coming. Spend all your time with him for the next two weeks.

And suddenly every, the penny just dropped. It was like, he spent time and he just showed me what it actually meant. When you are working, what it meant versus training, you’re hearing it. You go, oh, that makes sense. That makes sense. But when you’re there by yourself, sometimes you go. You start second guessing yourself because it’s so new.

And I think that’s the biggest thing is you, ’cause you’re working solo, there’s a lot of pressure on you. You don’t have that team that you go, well who do I turn to? As you would say, in local government or state government. ’cause there’s other people you can work with here. It’s, you’re on your own and you are supposed to be the expert.

People are coming to you for advice. So there’s a lot of reading, a lot [00:31:00] of interpretation. You go, I’ve read it, I understand it, but what does that mean practically? And yeah, that was, that was that first month on board. They were long days where you were working 11, 12 hours a day because it was just so much knowledge, so much information I had to try and take on and try to get myself into a routine where I was comfortable with myself.

But after that first month and having someone to guide me, it was totally different. It’s something you had the confidence. And that’s the thing, if you don’t have confidence, the crew will chew up and situate. If you can’t show confidence that you know what you are talking about, you know what to do and you are giving them direction, not, oh look, I’m not sure.

I’ll go and check. Uh, that, that’ll get you. That’s cutthroat. You’ll get yourself killed doing that. [00:32:00]