Transcript
I really didn't think I'd ever get promoted because promotion to senior rank in the Reserves is quite hard and I think I was just fortunate, my timing was good and the DG four Navy health reserves became vacant and I was nominated for that and recommended for that role and promoted.
So I was very fortunate to do that. I had to look after all the Navy health reserves. So it's all the health professionals who are in the Reserve for Navy and help them be sure that they're prepared to do their role for Navy should they be called in to do postings at sea or tri-service postings that they've trained, they're ready to go that we know their situation as to whether they're ready to go, because obviously, as a reservist, there's stages of life and their family situation will change over time.
And sometimes there's periods where going away on a posting for a period of time might be quite difficult. Other times it's much better. So it was, "How do we know that everybody's trained, that they're right to go?" Navy would regularly say, "We need two doctors and a surgeon to do this task, who can you find for us?"
We'd have a really good feel for who is ready to go and who would be available, and we'd be able to give them a number of names of people who might be ready to go … I had staff and remembering everybody's part time so it's not, you're not managing a full-time burden of people doing that. So they're all part time as well. But, as I said, I had staff who were full time, but I was part time.
