A Day in the Life of an advanced exercise physiologist

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Preventable Health Pathways Clinical Team Manager Luke Snabaitis is the first exercise physiologist (EP) in Queensland Health history to manage a multi-stream clinical team. Based at Sunshine Coast Hospital and Health Service, he is also a nominee for EP for the year and for the members’ award from his governing body, Exercise & Sports Science Australia. Here’s a day in his life.

05:30–06:30 Exercise or project work — but can swap to the evening.

06:30 My day starts — shower and breakfast, talk with my partner.

07:00 Travel to work — listen to a podcast both to and from work.

07:45 Get to work and look at some emails and log any staff leave and make adjustments to the day.

08:00 Run our morning meeting with our team; it brings us together and starts the day well. I’ll have a look at the week and prioritise based on need — what tasks and when, depending on changes coming in.

Luke in the morning meeting with his team.

08:30 Attend our managers’ huddle for the week — we all head up different programs and our full teams’ manager and exec speaks about what’s upcoming for us all, and we make plans together.

09:00 Review and action any more emails. Have a catch-up meeting with a staff member — very important to have set times each month as we can be across sites and miss each other.

09:30 Meet with the team for our fortnightly case review. We discuss as a group and I’ll often provide advice on directions and treatments we could support a patient with.

10:30 Triage our referrals for the team; I may contact referrers or review the patients sent — to decide the appropriate or best team member for support.

11:00 I like to have morning tea here if I can. Catch different team members for a chat, check in.

11:30 Back to it, reply to emails and review reporting data we have upcoming. Prepare our ‘workload weekly’ email. I outline what meetings, clinics and special events we have. We track our patient numbers. I’ll include some fun stuff at the end or quick pictorials on different interpersonal skills. We have a culture of growth and it’s important I support that.

12:00 Complete a shortlisting for a new role we are recruiting and begin to make arrangements as the panel chair.

13:00 With my co-chair we chair the International Clinical Exercise Physiology meeting. We are the fastest growing health profession in Australia and public health exercise physiology is growing even faster. We are working internationally now to support other countries’ growth, which has been a great step up from the national chair role.

Luke speaking to trainees on career options.

14:00 I aim to go to lunch, have some vegetables, and go for a quick walk. I add a short meditation at the end to reset.

14:30 Review any emails that have come in and head over for our operation and performance meeting.

15:30 Sit down with the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander senior health worker manager; we review our team’s data, discuss the culture and do forward planning. We take our team’s culture very seriously and have a meeting set aside every second month to do something fun with the team and discuss our values at the same time.

16:30 Quickly check any emails that have come in and pack up to head home.

17:30 Make dinner with my partner, we like to cook together. See how her day was.

18:30 Off to work on a project I run in my spare time.

19:30 I’ll do a strength workout — this can occur in the early morning or the evening.

20:00 I do a leadership reflection on how the day went. I’ll then meditate and do some yoga.

20:30 Time to sit down and read a bit. I find this relaxing, plus I love to learn — so I’m always reading multiple books at once.

21:00 If anything is still on my mind, I like to write it down with a quick solution. Usually I’ll talk with my partner and aim for a 9:30 sleep time.

21:30 Sleep.

Images: Supplied