Shanan Procter, APAM

Mother of three, Gold Coast, Queensland

I’ve always had an interest in the human body and helping others.

Mixed with my love of sport, physiotherapy was a natural choice.

I studied at the University of Queensland and I had my first child throughout that degree.

I went into a new grad rotation in the hospital system in Brisbane.

That was a huge learning experience but the pressure, the long hours and the strict environment didn’t give me enough flexibility to be the mum I wanted to be to my son.

So I went in search of something that was a little bit more flexible, with a better work-life balance.

That’s when I started to work in the aged care sector, which turned out to be my true calling.

I had a great employer who allowed me to work part-time, build my skills and interests.

It gave me the pressure-free balance I needed in those early baby years.

Once the kids got a bit older and were off to school, I wanted to put my career first again and make it more of a priority after it had taken a backseat.

I had a passion to effect change in aged care, so that’s when I decided to start Harvest Physio Co.

I always wanted to give people a welcoming environment to work in and to visit.

It started very small—just myself—and has since grown to more than 15 staff.

But as with any growth decision, I am always guided by the impact on my family.

I have a supportive husband, Sam, who’s happy to take on more of a stay-at-home father role to our three children—Harry, 10, Stella, six, and Duke, four.

When we first started the business, Sam was working full-time in a different industry and it was hectic, stressful and hard on the family.

So we made a decision for him to step down from his job and support the family and business.

Shanan Procter enjoys balancing family life with her physiotherapy career. 

Sam now plays a huge role in the business operations, HR and admin of Harvest.

There has been many an in-service in our clinic where I’ve had a toddler on my lap or times when I have asked my receptionist to take the kids off to the park for an hour while I focus on something at the practice.

During school holidays there are sometimes more kids in the waiting room on iPads than there are patients.

But it’s just one of those things—you have to lose that vision of what you expected it to look like.

Some days it isn’t pretty and it’s certainly not perfect, but it works for us.

As a 36-year-old women leading an ever-increasing group of young people, at work and at home, I see myself as their guide to becoming good people, kind to themselves and to their community.

It is my responsibility to show others that it may not be a linear pathway but, with resilience, they too can achieve personal and professional goals without having to choose one over the other.

I’ve shifted a bit towards my staff members doing all the clinical appointments rather than me.

But that’s not to say that I haven’t had to schedule appointments around school drop-offs or pick-ups or if there’s a music concert or a footy game on.

Physios can often have a high-achieving, perfectionism streak.

As someone who used to think they could do it all without missing a beat, parenting certainly taught me a lot.

The biggest lesson I learnt when blending my love of physio and parenting is that you must let go of the idea that you have to be all or nothing, or that the skills of parenthood are irrelevant to physiotherapy: personal accountability, organisation, preparation and working with purpose are invaluable.

Don’t ever doubt that you can’t upskill or start again.

In my career I remember feeling absolutely irrelevant to the industry because my priorities had been the kids for so long.

As it turns out, it is those softer life skills that make exceptional physios.

Germaine Tan, APAM & Ken Koh, APA Musculoskeletal Physiotherapist

Parents of three, Melbourne, Victoria

Germaine: I studied physio with Ken at the University of Melbourne and the reason I chose physio really started from a desire to work in the hospitals.

I wanted to help people get back to being able to live their normal lives after having an injury or a condition.

Now I work in both a major public hospital and a community not-for-profit health service.

My current roles are as a physio project manager and research trials coordinator in cancer rehabilitation.

Ken: I studied with Germaine at the University of Melbourne; we actually met at university.

At the time, I didn’t fully understand the scope of what physios do but I was definitely interested in improving people’s health and working with people.

Now I work in public health.

I have really enjoyed the challenge and variety that working in public health brings in helping people to have the best possible health.

Germaine: We have three children—Clarisse, Celeste and Colette—and they’re seven, 11 and 13.

I never really knew what to expect of juggling working and family life, before having a family.

It’s one of those things you have go through and experience it to know what it’s like.

But the reality is that physio work is very forgiving in the sense that it offers flexibility in work hours and a variety of roles across so many different settings that you can take up.

Sometimes it’s definitely been a struggle and it’s hard to keep that work-life balance, but we keep at it.

Ken: I don’t know if I really had any expectations of what life would be like after having kids.

It is different experiencing it yourself, because obviously your priorities and values change.

In a good way, family life does take up time from other things.

You have to balance those things out, because we’ve all got limited capacity and time.

My life has not all been about my career or developing my career, because you have to weigh up other aspects such as the family side of things.

Germaine: Ken and I share the same views on how work should be and how we want to look after and manage our family.

We try to do a mixture of activities and have lots of fun as a family; we go on bike rides and walks together, we have movie nights and our kids enjoy soccer as a sport.

We plan ahead and try to see what the week ahead looks like.

That really helps us to be organised and navigate what activities our family is doing and what our work commitments are as well.

Germaine Tan and Ken Koh have three daughters: Clarisse, Celeste and Colette. 

Ken: I definitely think that without Germaine helping a lot, it would have been harder, even at work where I felt well supported.

If we need to do further study and professional development (PD), my work is supportive in different ways and that helps me balance all the different priorities.

Germaine and I are very busy and there are so many things going on in our family.

Pragmatically, we found having a shared calendar quite helpful, with life admin and organising all the different events going on between us.

That has always just been a bit of a juggle.

Germaine: I’m also the deputy chair of the Victorian APA Cancer, Palliative Care and Lymphoedema group, so that’s my secret to keeping up with PD.

Being part of the APA group has been such a great experience because you’re with like-minded physio colleagues and that feeds into your own passion and drive to learn more.

It can be hard juggling everything, your work and family, and more often than not, PD can take the back seat.

But I find you have to get around it in ways that suit your lifestyle.

COVID-19 has been good in the sense that lots of things and lots of PD events transitioned from being face to face to being online, so that was great in that Ken and I could both be at home and we could log on to an APA webinar together or just log in from work and not have to travel to a PD event.

Ken: I’ve mainly worked full-time and so I’ve always tried to take as many opportunities to help out at home, or to be able to support Germaine if she had involvement with the APA or other things, as I can.

More recently Germaine’s been a bit more involved with some of the APA subcommittees and I can help out with the family more.

Germaine: Going through COVID-19 in the past year and a half, we’ve had to adapt to all the changes going on.

Ken has been great because he’s got a very calm and composed nature as a parent and also as a physio.

In that sense, he sets the tone as to how we can manage all the changes happening around us.

I think it goes hand in hand being a physio because you are required to have good time management skills, to be organised and to be good at problem-solving.

I think we’ve learned how to take a step back and show a bit more grace to each other and be more patient and understanding.

With COVID-19, things don’t really go the way you planned and that’s just the way it is.

Although COVID-19 has been challenging, I’m confident that we can come through this and look back and breathe a sigh of relief, and reflect on what we’ve learnt and what’s challenged us.

Ken: I believe physio is, in some sense, a profession that allows a bit more flexibility between a career, work, community and family life.

I think there’s definitely opportunities, whether it’s with different types of shift work or working part-time.

Physiotherapy does allow for a blend and more of a balance.

There’s quite a bit of flexibility in the profession.

I think it has been good that both myself and Germaine are physios. It has allowed us some of that flexibility that we needed as a family.