Katherine Maka, APAM, packs an awful lot in her working day. On the road as the sun is barely rising, partially to avoid Sydney’s notoriously gridlocked traffic but also to plan the day ahead and catch up on work, Katherine is at her desk a good hour or more before the official start of her working day. As the team leader of the physiotherapy outpatient department at Westmead Hospital, Katherine leads and educates a team of 15 physiotherapists as well as managing her own clinical patient load.

Katherine has collaborated on various research projects and has been in a position, as team leader, to bring research into practice in the hospital setting. With a passion for project and people management, Katherine has also held various voluntary positions within the APA and she was also the first physiotherapy representative on the Emergency Care Institute Research Advisory Committee. To top it all off she’s also recently started studying for a project-based Master of Business Administration inInnovation in Health through the University of Canberra, and she’sjust taken on a 12-month secondment role as one of Westmead Hospital’s acting managers of innovation and redesign. But for the self-confessed workaholic, it is all a labour of love.

Maintaining a schedule that would leave many heads spinning, Katherine instead thrives on the buzz of activity. Joking that she survives on as little as four and a half hours of sleep a night, Katherine says she is passionate about what she does, and this makes the continual swapping of physiotherapy, management and mentor hats less of a juggling act and more of an orchestrated challenge. Dividing her time and energy on multiple fronts is just the way she likes it.

‘Life is really busy but I think if you enjoy something and you’re passionate about it, it makes it easier to do. We’re all human and we all have our ups and downs, but I think if you’re motivated, passionate, if you’re a good communicator, if you can build a strong team … I think that all helps,’ Katherine says.

‘You need to be very organised, I’m a very organised person by nature, and you need to plan ahead. I use a diary, I live by my diary, and that’s important in managing and leading well. I think recognising your own skills is important, too, and being able to delegate and foster skills of others or peers, not micro-manage. Applauding attributes of others and giving others the opportunity to grow and to grow with you, that really helps you balance those things and it makes my role as team leader rewarding.’

Balance is something Katherine has nurtured since she first walked through the doors of Westmead Hospital as an intern in 2001. As one of two interns chosen as rotating first-year graduates from a pool of 12 to be permanently employed at the hospital, she began learning to strike a balance between her patient load and her career aspirations. Working predominantly in musculoskeletal and women’s health over the next few years, Katherine had the opportunity to dabble in some higher senior roles—and she jumped at the chance.

After dipping her toe in private practice clinical work at the behest of a colleague for 12 months, Katherine returned to Westmead Hospital when a more senior role opened up. It was here that she began dividing her time between two passions—advocacy and teaching. She joined the APA New South Wales branch council and she extended her mentoring and teaching role with junior staff and colleagues in a variety of disciplines including breast cancer rehabilitation, and advanced and extended physiotherapy practice in an emergency department setting.

After joining the APA New South Wales branch in 2004, Katherine held various positions before she was appointed branch president in 2008, serving a two-year term. Around 2008/9, Katherine became aware of various niche emergency department groups ‘popping up and talking about emergency department physiotherapy’ so she joined other representatives from each state for the first meeting of the APA Emergency Department group in 2009—and became the newly formed group’s chair. She held that position until it was passed along to Deborah Lenaghan, APAM, this year.

As well as her various roles on APA committees and the like, Katherine was also involved in informing the National Advisory Council (NAC). She fondly recalls a time when she delivered a presentation to NAC on the scope of practice paper just six weeks after a delivery of another kind—her third son, Louis.

‘I’ve been fortunate to have those opportunities and be involved in the advocacy around APA. I think it’s important to have a voice because … once you get involved in the APA you see what a great organisation it is and how we’re across so many different spectrums and that we fight to get a voice at various tables,’ Katherine says. ‘You can’t just sit back and complain and say that other professions are emerging. Get on and have a voice, and give back to the profession. That’s what I feel I contribute to, through volunteering.’

Leading, advocating and learning have often gone hand-in-hand throughout Katherine’s life—getting a good education was something instilled in a young Katherine by her parents, who are are first generation Australian after their parents emigrated from Poland at the end of World War II. Both her parents spent time in migrant camps as young children and were driven by the need to get a good education, something they nurtured in their daughter. Only recently did Katherine and her mother journey back to Poland to meet some of their extended family.

The desire for the Australian generations of Katherine’s extended family to do well in their adopted country are deeply rooted in education, and it’s a mantle Katherine has espoused both personally and professionally. ‘I like the teaching and the interaction in the public sector. And I like musculoskeletal physiotherapy, so to be able to bring all that together as the senior musculoskeletal physiotherapist in the outpatient clinic has been wonderful. I enjoy the variety, my role is very varied,’ she says.

Katherine also enjoys rolling up her sleeves and getting stuck into projects— most recently she has had the opportunity to partner with Chrissan Seagram on a pilot project which has reduced the waiting time by about eight months for category three patients to be seen in the neurosurgical clinic at Westmead Hospital. Through the activation of text message reminders to patients, coupled with explanations of the cost of non-attendance to the healthcare system, the project has been a win–win for patients and clinicians, Katherine says. An administration officer making direct contact with the patients in favour of mailing letters has also boosted appointment attendance rates.

‘Having the opportunity to have a co-located clinic and access to conservative management makes sense,’ Katherine says. ‘The project shows how you can utilise existing resources within the hospital, use existing knowledge and skills to implement positive change for those patients, and that fits in with the hospital’s strategic priority, with spending wisely and improving the patient experience.’

With a business case currently underway to make the project sustainable, and interest being expressed from other hospitals and the Agency for Clinical Innovation board, the pilot project is also attracting the kind of attention that makes decision-makers sit up and listen. It was recently shortlisted at the Western Sydney Local Health District’s annual Quality Awards in the collaborative teams category, and it won the best poster presentation during the recent Hospital Week program at Westmead Hospital.

Katherine has also been a passionate advocate of the advanced practice role of physiotherapy in the emergency department setting, which can take a patient from triage right through to their discharge from the hospital without the need for a referral from a doctor or nurse. Although her new secondment role in 2019 will take her away from physiotherapy somewhat, Katherine says she will maintain her passion for the profession and her commitment to its education pool, innovative practitioners and practices and to its continued development.

‘I think it is important to acknowledge our ability to diagnose as physiotherapists. That makes us different to other close professions. In an emergency setting we’re seeing the musculoskeletal patients, our bread and butter, and that frees up time to allow the doctors to see more medically related conditions. It’s important that you have physios who have sound clinical reasoning in order to work in an ED setting in an advanced practice role. If you have that level of competency recognised, that’s the way we’re heading, to working in these more advanced roles,’ she says.

In order for her to succeed both professionally and personally, Katherine considers herself lucky to have been exposed to many great mentors, such as Dragana Ceprnja, APAM. She met Dragana when she first started in physiotherapy: her first rotation was in the outpatients setting and Dragana was her senior. ‘We became colleagues but she’s always been a great mentor to me. She helps me keep things in perspective and she also strives for success and has a positive attitude,’ Katherine says.

Katherine and colleague Dragana Ceprnja

Katherine is also thankful for the support of her husband Pier Luigi and her sons Marcus, 8, Nikolas, 6, and two-year-old Louis. ‘I have a supportive husband and we work together somehow. There is a bit of juggling involved but, with a bit of flexibility in our work schedules, it is busy but it’s manageable,’ Katherine says.