🚑 Interested in a career in healthcare?
Hear the pros and cons of different healthcare settings, the general application process (including interviews and reference checks), and red flags to look out for when considering employers.
PS - Check out our curated list of graduate healthcare jobs!
🗣️ Specifically interested in speech language pathology?
Learn all about it, from breaking into the field to opportunities to work abroad and everything in between: the day-to-day work, ups and downs, career progression, and work-life balance.
🌍 Are you an international student?
Hear Jie explain why non-native speakers can become speech pathologists, the benefits of working in healthcare as an international, and tips for mastering small talk and professional written communication.
🤷♂️ Feeling lost in life?
You'll be reassured to hear how Jie was able to pivot from a totally different field!
Here’s a transcript of our chat, cleaned up for clarity and ease-of-reading.
My name is Jie, and I'm originally from China. I moved to Australia as an international student back in 2017, and I started off by doing my Bachelor of Arts degree at the University of Melbourne. I majored in media and communication and also in cultural studies.
What brought me to Australia was that I was really looking for an adventure because I had already spent my first 20 years back in China, and I wanted to explore the world and also just to see how life looks in different parts of the world. So that's why I made the decision to move to Australia.
I first started as a Bachelor of Arts student at Melbourne Uni, as I've mentioned, majoring in Media and Communication and Cultural Studies, and I did one semester exchange at the University of Hong Kong in my second year of uni.
And then, after graduating from my bachelor's, I started my master's degree in speech pathology at the same uni and graduated in 2021. After that, I worked as a speech pathologist across different settings, for example, like private clinics and also in public hospitals.
In my final year of bachelor degree, I actually did a internship in one of the local market research companies.
And back then we had a kind of project that is collaborate with NDIS, which is National Disability Insurance Scheme that the government just gave the funding to people to access therapy service for those people who have disabilities. And I was a part of the market research company to do this project.
And during the project, I realized that there's a huge gap for people who from multicultural backgrounds to access the healthcare service in Australia because the healthcare system is pretty complicated and also different from what they have back home. So I feel like I'm very interested into this field and also feel very passionate to help people who are already very disadvantaged in society.
So that's why I've decided to restart from scratch and in speech pathology.
That's a very new direction for me because before I started my uni degree, I was always thinking I wanted to be one of the fancy office ladies working in the CBD area with a coffee in hand and have numerous meeting calls with other people talking about the slides, the presentations, etc.
But yeah, after the marketing internship, I just realised, yeah, okay. I feel like my passion is about how to help people. I really appreciated the opportunity to enable myself to find a new direction that I feel like, oh, I can devote my entire life to that.
In speech pathology, we help people across the lifespan, from very young infants to elderly people. We mainly help with their communication and swallowing.
This includes everything related to the mouth. Essentially, the speech sounds you make, the safety of eating and drinking, understanding language, the ability to make sentences, and building relationships with others, like social skills.
As I mentioned, we help people across the lifespan. For example, we can help children with their ability to say speech sounds properly, and we can help people, for instance, after a stroke, to communicate and eat and drink without choking.
Yeah, so working in the healthcare setting, we provide equal services to people, no matter their background.
Also, coming from a multicultural background myself helps me understand people who speak another language better. Sometimes, for example, if we have people who are really sick and come from a different cultural background and are too sick to communicate, I feel my background makes me more aware of their difficulties and helps me communicate with them in more effective and comfortable ways.
Yeah, so I'm currently working in a community health centre under a public hospital. My day can vary; it could be very different depending on the day of the week. Usually, I start with a morning huddle.
We work with other healthcare professionals as well. So, for example, occupational therapists, physiotherapists, and even paediatricians, social workers. Everyone in our team gathers together in the morning just to chat about how the day is going to look, how we are going to support each other.
And yeah, just to work out a plan, see how we collaborate and provide service to people. After that, usually, I have one-on-one appointments. For the appointments, it could be either an assessment, one-on-one therapy, group therapy, or collaboration, like the other day when I had a collaboration with my occupational therapist colleague.
So we were seeing a child who has language delay as well as emotion regulation difficulties, which is very interesting. So after my one-on-one assessment or whatever, I have time to write my notes and also do some self-directed learning because sometimes we really need to keep updated with recent evidence and therapy approaches.
Yeah, so that's basically what my day looks like.
I was trying to find an example like this morning on my way to work, thinking, "How could I find a sample to show people how cool my job is?"
Back to around a year ago, I was working as a speech pathologist in a non-profit organisation. I was working with a child with a refugee background from Afghanistan who has cerebral palsy. Basically, for cerebral palsy, it really impacts your muscle movements. So it's really hard for her to say each single word because if the muscle isn't working, and you don't have the power to make different shapes with your mouth, and even to coordinate your tongue and teeth, just to make every single sound. Literally, she's nonverbal.
And as she's already four years old, she has a very clear idea in her brain, but just the signal between her brain and muscle is like a breakdown. So it's hard for her to say a single sound. As a speech pathologist and also thinking about the refugee background of this family, they are facing a really hard financial burden. They don't have the financial ability to download those fancy apps that you can just use on an iPad; that's really not affordable for them.
So what I've done is I bought two buttons, the yes button and the no button, that you can find in a grocery or Kmart. And just to show the little girl how to use the red for no and green for yes. And because she still has the hand strength to hit the button.
After we tried a little bit, she's able to use this button confidently and for the first time ever to let her mum know how she doesn't want to drink milk, for example, or she wants more rice by hitting the yes button. So I think this is a very good thing, or one thing I feel really proud of, because first, I helped her find a way to communicate with her family members.
And second, it's really affordable for their family. Yeah, so I just gave her, I feel like I gave her the voice to express her own idea.
I think it was before I was applying for my master's degree. Yeah.
It's just because I feel like once I decided to work in healthcare, the first thing is the healthcare system is more established in Australia, and also the welfare system here is more established as well. So, people have access to quality healthcare, and also all of the research, and also the therapy approaches, they're more advanced in the speech pathology field.
That's why I decided to stay here before I decided which master program I was going to apply for.
The other benefit of working as a speech pathologist is the registration is recognised across different countries. So, for example, I can transfer my licence to the UK, Canada, Hong Kong, or Singapore, so I can continue working as a speech pathologist there. And also, I do have colleagues who previously worked in the UK for a while and then moved back to Australia.
Yeah, if you want to find a job in Australia as a speech pathologist, one of the requirements is you must have a registration with Speech Pathology Australia, which is the national body that looks after or regulates all of the practising speech pathologists in Australia.
To be a registered speech pathologist, you need to complete one of the recognised or certified courses. Yeah, so that's how, after you graduate, you can apply for the registration straight away. So that's the process of getting a registration or licence, but different countries have different requirements.
But once you get the registration in Australia, you can transfer it or convert it to other English-speaking countries just to meet their requirements.
Basically, you just need to pass your uni courses. But the uni course is really hard to pass, I would say, because it's not only about theories, but also you need to pass your interview exam and your placements as well. For the course, for each semester, we have, for example, four to five theoretical courses. For these courses, they're pretty similar to other uni courses. You need to do your readings, do your assessments, and also do your essays, and also pass the final exams.
So that's one of the very typical uni courses. The other part is what we call OSCE. So OSCE is basically the uni, they will hire some actors and actresses to act like patients. So you need to put your speech pathology hat on to interact with them and to handle any unexpected situations. And also, there will be an examiner sitting in the same venue with you and they will do the writing. So that's what we call OSCE, like the interview assessment.
And the other part is the placements. So back to my course, we had five placements you need to pass. And one of the experienced speech pathologists will be your supervisor and they are going to do your writing. And if they fail you, you have to redo the placements or have a negotiation with the uni to work out an alternative plan.
So that's the three main parts for the entire course. You have to pass every single step before you can graduate.
As I've mentioned, because we work with people across the lifespan and also work on different areas, for example, communication and swallowing, our placements need to cover all of that. That includes the population we are working with and also the area of treatments.
My first placement was in a private practice, working with children who have speech sound errors. I also had two hospital placements working with adult populations, for example, after a stroke or with chronic neurological conditions, such as Parkinson's disease or Huntington's disease.
I did a placement in a primary school working on literacy and also general therapy with children who have autism.
So, I think the overall challenge I had was the language and cultural barrier, I would say, because working with patients, they're not only patients with a medical condition. They are also humans.
To build up a relationship with them, you need to know the culture to start your chit-chats, to start your daily checking in. As a foreigner myself, it's really hard to find common topics as an icebreaker to start a conversation. That's one of the biggest challenges I found.
The other thing was communication-wise, I would say, although I'm a person who helps people with communication problems, I personally have communication problems, like how to talk with people and make yourself understood in different ways.
And also how to make your written communication professional when you communicate with different healthcare professionals. Also, when you work in the hospital in particular, it has so many acronyms and abbreviations. So that's a culture shock for me, just learning all of the abbreviations.
Yeah, I feel like I'm still a work in progress, to be honest, but I've found my tricks.
So, for example, because I'm working in the paediatric setting, we're working with kids. So, basically, the trending TV shows, for example, Bluey, Peppa Pig, could be a good icebreaker. And also just the plan for weekends. That could be a good topic as well. And also just try to know your clients or your patients a bit better.
For example, if you work with them for a while, you will know what their holiday plan is going to look like, how their pets at home are, or even the public holidays that recently passed. So that could also be good icebreaking conversation topics.
Yeah, so I feel like the challenge part for written communication is the purpose of your communication. So, what is the purpose of your reports? Sometimes, for example, we write reports to apply for funding. We write reports to advocate for the kiddo to get more support in school, or sometimes you just want to write down some key points to communicate with the treating doctors.
You really have to customise your language depending on your audience. So that's one thing I found a bit challenging.
But one strategy I personally found useful was templates. You can just pick up your templates, depending on who your reader is.
For my current work setting, I write a lot of letters to the doctors. Because they are doctors, we use a lot of abbreviations or terminologies because we share the same understanding. Same thing for other health professionals. That's one thing I found easy because it's straight off my head. I don't have to make further explanations for that.
Yeah, and another thing is writing reports for teachers and parents. So it really depends on the purpose of your reports. For example, if you want to write a report just to update the progress, the language really needs to be parent-friendly. So no jargons, no terminologies, and also be strength-based because you don't want to demolish parents' confidence.
And for the teacher, it really needs to be a really firm tone and also jargon-free as well, because although they're a teacher, they're professional as well, but we have different specialties. And also being functional because the purpose for a teacher to read the reports is to support a kiddo better in an educational setting. So that's the other thing.
And also, for writing the reports for applying for funding, it could be a bit different as well because here you are advocating for your patients and you want to get more support for them. So it really needs to be needs-based. So you really have to outline what kind of area they require support with.
I think one thing I found helpful was during my placement, I asked for a lot of report templates or examples that I could learn from, which my supervisors helped a lot with.
And also in my current workplace, because I am the only non-native speaker in this environment, I have a bunch of lovely colleagues that I can feel free to ask questions of. Yes. So I think those could be two strategies I've used so far to help with my written communication.
Yeah. I think for a speech pathologist, the underlying principle is about how to treat speech errors, not about how to fix the accent, because there are two different things. Fixing the accent is more a job for an accent coach, but treating speech errors is more like a job for a speech pathologist.
And also, treating speech errors isn't only about how you adjust your accent. Because usually, in English, we have consonants and vowels.
So, consonants are those little bits, and a vowel is like a, e, i, o, u. Usually, the vowels are the key points to determine your accent. Like in English, we have Australian, American, and British accents. So that's all related to the vowel, but usually, the speech errors happen in the consonants.
If you can say the consonant properly, it doesn't matter what kind of accent you are speaking.
Yeah, so a very classic one is called fronting. Basically, when kids are learning to talk, they are able to say the sound in isolation, but when they assemble the sound into a word, sometimes they may drop one sound or they may replace one sound with another.
So fronting is one of the errors that involves replacing and sequencing issues. For example, for 'car', like driving a car, some kiddos, they will say 'tar'. The name 'fronting' is because the 'k' sound in 'car' is a backing sound. You are using the back of your mouth to say this sound, but they're replacing it with a front sound. So you are using the front part of your mouth. So that's what we call fronting. For example, a kid will say, "I wanna drive a red tar." But actually, they mean, "I wanna drive a red car." So that's one of the very typical errors. And the other error is replacing the 'r' sound with 'w'.
For example, 'red carrot', they will say 'wed cawwot'. Yeah. Those are two very typical errors that I've found so far.
Yeah, so it's really hard to give a concrete number because it really depends on so many factors.
For example, if they are completing their homework as prescribed, and also like their attention and their ability to understand instructions, and also whether their cognition level is there already, and even about their vocabulary, because for all of the speech errors, you need to have a real word as a carrier.
So those factors would all be taken into consideration when you think about how long it's going to take to fix the error. But usually, based on the evidence, for one speech error, it's going to take roughly six weeks to fix that.
Yeah, so I think working in different settings is really related to how you are going to plan your career and also what kind of population you want to work with. For example, in the hospital setting, it's going to be very medical, and maybe you mainly work with people who have medical conditions.
So sometimes it could be really stressful because of the medical setting and it's really fast-paced. But on the other hand, it could be very productive, because you are given a deadline to finish everything, so everything needs to be very fast-paced, you are going to make your clinical decision really quickly.
So that's for the hospital setting. And also, you can work with a lot of different people like doctors, nurses, dieticians, all of the very knowledgeable people, and you have a team to work with. That's for the general hospital setting and for the private clinic setting or not-for-profit clinical setting.
I think you really have the chance to work with the family in a long term. So it really gives you the opportunity to try different things and track their progress because you have a longer period of time to witness how the kiddo is going to do or how the patient is going to achieve their goal in a long-term way.
You are not in a rush to finish everything. But on the other hand, sometimes it could be a bit repetitive because thinking about the long-term nature, because you are working with them for one year or two years. Yeah, sometimes you really have to repeat the same thing over and over again.
And also in the education setting, which I personally don't have a lot of experience. I only had my placement in that setting. But yeah. So for the education setting, you have to collaborate with parents, carers, and also with teachers, and also all of the approaches you are using, they really need to be academically focused.
It's going to be a very challenging but interesting experience for those who want to work in the education setting.
Yeah, I think it helped a lot because working as a speech pathology student, you really have the chance to experience the flavour of working in different settings in depth.
Yeah. I really enjoyed my hospital placements, but I feel like I personally really get emotional when I see those really sick patients. That's why after I graduated, I feel like although the hospital is really fun, and it's very interesting to work, but just thinking about my personal ability to handle all of the stress and emotion, I feel like maybe not for now.
Yeah, so after graduating, I worked as a key worker, speech pathologist. So basically, a key worker is you are the key contact person or key therapist for the family. And sometimes you're not working as a speech pathologist, but also you work as a social worker, for example, to deal with the funding application, etc. That's what we call a transdisciplinary model. You need to put on different hats while also doing your speech pathology job.
I was working as a key worker speech pathologist for a not-for-profit organization. But I only stayed there for a couple of months. It's just because I personally really enjoy getting more in-depth experience in speech pathology first in the early career stage before I'm able to take on more roles and responsibilities down the track. So that's why I've decided to shift to a more specialized speech pathology clinical setting, which is where I am now.
Hospitals have different departments. They have inpatient and outpatient settings. Traditionally, inpatient settings are for those people who are really sick and are staying in the ward.
But I work in the outpatient settings. We don't have any patients stay overnight. They just come in for the session and then leave. So for those outpatients, they're more like medically stable patients who come in and just drop in for a one-on-one session. You can just interpret it as a GP clinic, for example.
I personally feel like I was lucky enough that I didn't encounter any difficulties looking for a job as a speech pathologist. But back then, when I was looking for my internship as a marketing intern, I did encounter a lot of challenges and difficulties.
I'm not an HR person, but I personally feel there are two factors. One is the supply and demand. Because, in Australia, we are really in shortage of healthcare professionals, for example, nurses and doctors, so the supply is lower than the demand at the moment.
So it's really easy for us to find a job. And also, another thing is, as a speech pathologist, what they are really looking for is your registration. So once you get registration, it's like a pass card for getting a job in this field. But back then, working in marketing, the supply is really higher than the demand.
That's why I personally found it hard to find a job in marketing.
Yeah. When I initially came here, I was an international student. So I was on my student visa for my entire bachelor in marketing and also master's degree.
And after graduating, I applied for the temporary graduate visa. So like for the subclass 485. That's part of the package.
And I was lucky enough because after, because I applied in February after I graduated and I got an invite for permanent residency in August the same year. And then became a permanent resident of Australia.
I think so because back then when I was applying for my PR, I think the government released some press conference or something saying, "Oh, we are prioritizing those working in healthcare."
I was in the fast track stream to get my PR, just based on the information I've got.
I feel like in healthcare, the recruiters are really actively looking for new grads. I built up my LinkedIn profile really early. And even before I graduated, I got a lot of private messages from recruiters just saying, "Are you looking for a job or something?"
So I did have a chat with some of the recruiters just to get to know how the salary is going to look like, what the benefits are, how the caseload looks like.
And after I graduated, I also did some research by myself on SEEK, those mainstream job hunting websites. And then I also had a chat with my friends, saying, "How's your offer look like?" Just to get some insider information before I made my decision.
Oh, that's not a problem.
They just want to make sure you have the working rights in Australia and you have your registration. I think those are the two things they care about and they don't care about whether you have PR or not.
I really care about the culture of the company, like how they value their employees. I also value how they treat their patients or clients because it explains how they are going to treat their employees as well. Benefits and salaries are important, of course. That's what we are working for, isn't it? And also, the career progression pathways are things I would consider.
I'm still considered an early career speech pathologist. Mainly, I do all the clinical work.
After a couple of years, I might progress to grade two. For grade two, you take on more responsibilities, for example, supervising students, and on the other hand, you will have one to two specialised areas that you want to dive into deeply.
After a couple of years of being grade two, some people progress to grade three. That's more like a management role to manage all the speech pathologists, or some people might even consider opening their private practice.
It really depends on what kind of work-life balance you are looking for, and how far you want to progress your career and in which direction.
I haven't reached that point yet, but back in my uni days, we had a lot of mature age students thinking about a career shift, which is really brave, I would say. They're more like adventurers.
I met someone who had been a social worker for 10 years and then decided to be a speech pathologist, or someone who was a speech pathologist and is now working to create her own therapy resources and sell to other speech pathologists, so an entrepreneur.
We do have KPIs in our field. For example, how many patients you are seeing per day. One of the questions to test for red flags could be to ask for the KPIs of the company and the way they calculate the KPIs.
As an early career speech pathologist, I would ask how much supervision the company is able to provide to me, because in the early career, you still have a lot of questions you want to ask someone. The supervisor is a key person to determine how much support you will get.
Also ask about the opportunities for further professional development, the extra training you will be able to get, or the opportunities to collaborate with different people.
Also, the staff turnover rates of the company. Because we have such a high demand in this field, sometimes for some companies, the staff turnover rate is really high, it might explain something.
It really depends on the setting you are working in. For example, if you're working in a hospital, like an inpatient hospital, because the time you are seeing each patient is really short, for example, only 20 to 30 minutes. Maybe in one morning, you will be able to see five to six clients or patients.
But in the clinic setting, because one appointment is one hour, sometimes you are seeing four to five patients per day. It's hard for me to give a concrete number on how much KPI we are looking at.
But as long as you feel it's doable, reasonable, and not giving you a lot of pressure to achieve the KPI, that would be a sweet spot. One very useful thing is to ask your seniors, your friends, for example, because you guys have been through this process before.
It's hard to tell from placement, as in the placement, all of your workload is allocated by your supervisor. So it's hard to tell because you're not allowed to see patients independently. It needs to be supervised. So it's really hard for you to tell what a day is going to look like after I work independently. Frontline placement is really hard to tell.
I would say I talk too much. As a speech pathologist, for example, if one appointment is one hour and you are seeing four to five patients per day, it's five hours of nonstop talking.
Working with kids is really draining because you have to exaggerate your affect to make your appointment fun and enjoyable. After days of working, my throat is just really dry and tired. That's the least favorite part of working as a speech pathologist – you talk too much.
When working with kids, you really have to use intonations, unlike adult conversation. I feel like I don't even need to go to the gym to work out because I'm crawling on the ground all day, every day, and jumping with the kids doing star jumps.
Sometimes the progress of the clients really surprises you. You might think, "I didn't do that much," but they've already made such huge progress.
Also, the variety of areas of practice that speech pathologists can do is surprising. Before I started, I thought it was only about fixing people's speech sounds. But now, I work with two-year-olds who can barely say single words, five-year-olds who have a stutter, three-year-olds with cute speech sound errors, or even as a parent coach to help them communicate with their children. The job brings a lot of variety.
It's a sweet spot for me at the moment. Although I work full time, five days per week from 8:30 am to 5 pm, it's long hours, but I don't have to do any overtime work. After I leave the hospital, I don't have access to the computer. I get five weeks of annual leave, and each month we have an extra day off. Adding it all together, I have enough time to plan for a big holiday ahead or just to get a long weekend.
Each organization varies. If you have a recruiter you trust, you can give them your resume, and they will find a matching job for you and arrange all the interviews with the employers. That's one pathway.
The other pathway is the traditional SEEK process. You hand in your resume, they schedule a phone call interview to get to know more about you, and after that, they might schedule a face-to-face interview or a Zoom call. In the interview, they ask traditional questions like "Tell me more about yourself," and for some employers, they ask clinical questions, like how you would make a therapy plan for a particular case.
Some companies even have multiple rounds of interviews. The first round might focus on soft skills and interpersonal skills, and the second one could be more clinically focused. Sometimes, they blend these two parts together. It can be stressful when you are the only person, and they have three different people from three different departments on a Zoom call.
The most tricky part is the soft skill part. The clinical part is actually the easiest because it's related to what you've learned.
Different settings have different expectations for a speech pathologist. Sometimes they expect you to collaborate with other professionals, and sometimes they expect you to work independently. It's hard to tailor your answer to meet their needs.
The reference check can be a bit stressful. For example, they may call up your reference and ask, "What do you think about this person? Should we hire her?" You are not there with your reference, so it's hard to know if they said something good about you or provided some constructive feedback.
Firstly, there's a phone call interview, then the face-to-face interview. After the face-to-face interview, some companies contact your reference because they're considering offering you the job, but some contact your reference regardless of the decision. It can be a bit stressful, wondering if they contact your reference and then don't offer you the job. It tends to be between the interview and the offer, but it depends on the organization's preferences. For my hospital job, they contacted my reference straight away. One of my references was my previous manager, so it was really stressful.
I usually get their permission before I apply for the job anyway, because I don't want to surprise them.
When I was applying for my marketing internship, there was no such thing as a reference check. But when applying for my healthcare job, everything needed a reference, sometimes two or three.
Introverts may not be a great fit for this role. I'm an introvert in daily life but an extrovert at work. Being a speech pathologist, you have to build relationships with people in a short period of time to gain their trust and help them open up to you. If you're an introvert, it can be hard to open up and gain trust. Another type of person who might not fit well is someone who is very traditional and not ready to embrace new cultures. As a speech pathologist, you work with people from different backgrounds, not just culturally, but also in terms of social status and life stages. If you hold yourself back and stay in your comfort zone, it's hard to take on changes or understand other people's backgrounds. It depends on compatibility.
Just be real and be yourself. At the end of the day, you are human, not a working machine. The way you present yourself impacts how you deliver your service and build relationships with others. As a speech pathologist, it's a people job, not a machine or coding job. You are dealing with humans. So be open-minded to understand other people's experiences
I'm really happy with where I am at the moment and I'm not regretting anything I've done, but professionally, I wish I could have learned more about human life science back in my bachelor's time.
So I would have a more concrete foundation to work in my speech pathology role because, at the end of the day, it's more of a healthcare role, not a psychology or educational role. I wish I could have had a more concrete idea. Also, when I was looking for my new grad job, the first job out of uni, I wish I could have considered more different settings rather than just the private clinic setting.
Because once you focus on one setting, you are not thinking about the possibilities in other fields, but actually working in another field is going to be really different from where you are looking at the moment. I think those would be two things I would restart if I had the chance.