The Aspiring Young Women’s Network Breakfast with Elise Gane (’04)

When she finished school, all Elise Gane (’04) wanted to do was become a physiotherapist – to work in professional sport, as many set on the physio pathway want to do. Yet her career as a physiotherapist evolved through a PhD into becoming a health services researcher, and further through a Master of Public Health into becoming a principal project officer – all far beyond what she expected. 

Being invited back to St Margaret’s in this capacity was very meaningful to Elise, particularly given the careers-focused nature of the event.

“I was flattered to be asked and really pleased to have had this opportunity to come back and share what I’m passionate about, and what I’m passionate about is encouraging people to consider a career in healthcare. I was very happy to be offered the opportunity to speak to students,” Elise said.

It was important to Elise to demonstrate that physiotherapy as a career extends beyond the assumption that it is simply sports oriented. In her clinical work, for example, she has done much work with cancer patients and their recovery.

“Lots of people go into physio wanting to be a sports physio, but once they get an understanding through their training of the breadth of spaces that physios can work in and the wide variety of contributions that they can make, they change their minds.

“It’s certainly an understandable assumption – many people in the community think of sports physio as it’s the most commonly seen part of the profession for the general community. Other groups – people with disability or their family members and carers – have a better understanding of what physios can do outside of sports, particularly for those with health conditions.

“The career that I’ve had has enabled me to do to a lot of different things – to improve people’s lives in a lot of different ways. When I decided to do a PhD, I decided it was worth the risk and the hard effort. It’s challenging to go back to being a full-time student after working clinically, but it was worth it as it gave me a whole new skillset and perspective on healthcare and particularly how innovation and advancement happen in healthcare.”

Innovation and advancement are exactly where Elise is working now, looking at how artificial intelligence (AI) can help revolutionise the healthcare system by assisting clinicians to make decisions without detracting from the human-facing nature of healthcare.

“AI will be able to help reduce the cognitive load – it can provide clinicians with the most obvious differential diagnoses. But a human will always be the one making the decisions – AI is just about supporting those decisions.”

The digital health space in Queensland is constantly evolving, as the system progressively becomes more digitised and integrated with AI. All of this will ultimately help match the right treatment to the right patient at the right time. One current project of Elise’s focus is related to AI and the early detection of sepsis in patients.

“With sepsis, there is a national set of clinical care standards to guide health professionals to manage sepsis appropriately. AI can help push treatments that are consistent with this national standard and help to ensure that healthcare is more consistent and backed by evidence.”

For Old Girls considering a career in allied health or physiotherapy more specifically, Elise encourages them to take that first step and welcome the plethora of opportunities that will come afterwards.

“Allied health is a really rewarding profession to work in – it’s really great if you’re a people person and enjoy helping people. Give it a go! Once you get into health, there’s quite a broad range of career options and pathways that your career can take – my career pathway is an example of that.”

By Lizzie Fowler (’19)

Relationships & Mentoring Manager