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Talitha Linehan: If you can begin by introducing yourself.
Sian Basnett: I'm a doctor from South Africa. I was born here and I've grown up here in Johannesburg.
Talitha Linehan: How did you become a cruise ship doctor?
Sian Basnett: I started to work in the emergency room at the hospital where I did my training. At the time it was an environment I liked. It was fast paced. It was interesting. And then after a while it was kind of feeling quite the same. I was looking for something different to do. I'm still in the medical field, obviously. And I had a friend who had a brother that was working on cruise ships, and he was really enjoying it. So, I started investigating. And so, I went to sea for three years or so. And then I came back to land, actually, where I worked as a family doctor. I did that for a few years and then decided again that I would like to travel. So, I went back to the ship life, which is interesting because a lot of people in my age bracket are kind of doing the opposite of that. You know, you feel a bit nomadic at times, but I still enjoy it. It has interesting challenges.
Talitha Linehan: So, what was it that made you want to go and do that again?
Sian Basnett: I think. What I really enjoy about working on the ship is that there's really a unique set of challenges. On land, you get used to having difficult cases, but even if you're in a hospital, you've got specialists there, you've your scanners there, you've got all sorts of things that make managing what particular difficult case you have so much easier. Whereas at sea, you still are restricted. You don't have access necessarily to a particular specialty that you want. It really makes you use your training and your clinical acumen to work in the context of what information you have and to still get the good outcome. I would be lying if I said the travel wasn't a huge perk, but it's really a lifestyle because your whole life centres around the vessel that you're on. So, it centres around, yes, the travel, but also around the work because you can't separate yourself from it. When you're on land, you can, at the end of the day, lock your office up, get in the car, or the train, or whatever, and go home. And you leave all of the work things at work. And that doesn't happen on a ship. And so, I think, without the work aspect being so positive, it would have been difficult to go back purely for the travel.
Talitha Linehan: Have you ever had an emergency where a patient had to be airlifted from the ship?
Sian Basnett: When we were in Alaska, we did have a situation where we had to change course to a smaller town so that a helicopter could meet us in the town, rather, and land, and then we could do the transfer. The danger always being when you're at sea, you know that the conditions have to be exactly perfect. You can't have too much wind, or the waves can't be too big. You can’t be too far. And there's always the possibility, if something goes wrong, that the helicopter could crash. And so, when we do those kinds of things, we always look at, first of all, what is the safest way that we can do it in the most time-effective way possible. We always try and avoid that kind of thing because obviously even if one person is ill, you still have hundreds of other people who were hoping for a particular route, and it obviously affects their trip as well. But in my experience, but although they’re disappointed, people have been very understanding and very kind about the fact that somebody is requiring us to make this change.
Talitha Linehan: What kind of facilities do you have on the ship? Is it like a mini-hospital?
Sian Basnett: It feels a lot like a rural doctor's office or an urgent care. But having said that, we can do some pretty advanced things. We have hospital-level kind of equipment in terms of if someone needs to be put on a ventilator, for example, and we can keep them on the machine and breathe for them and monitor them until we can send them to an ICU. We can do an X-ray. Ultrasound is becoming more widely available. We can do a full blood count to look for infection, to look for that kind of thing. Or if someone is having a heart attack or something like that, we do have the sort of clot buster and ECGs. For where we are, which is quite often literally the middle of nowhere, we're pretty well equipped and we carry a pharmacy, as well.
Sian Basnett: I'm a doctor from South Africa. I was born here and I've grown up here in Johannesburg.
Talitha Linehan: How did you become a cruise ship doctor?
Sian Basnett: I started to work in the emergency room at the hospital where I did my training. At the time it was an environment I liked. It was fast paced. It was interesting. And then after a while it was kind of feeling quite the same. I was looking for something different to do. I'm still in the medical field, obviously. And I had a friend who had a brother that was working on cruise ships, and he was really enjoying it. So, I started investigating. And so, I went to sea for three years or so. And then I came back to land, actually, where I worked as a family doctor. I did that for a few years and then decided again that I would like to travel. So, I went back to the ship life, which is interesting because a lot of people in my age bracket are kind of doing the opposite of that. You know, you feel a bit nomadic at times, but I still enjoy it. It has interesting challenges.
Talitha Linehan: So, what was it that made you want to go and do that again?
Sian Basnett: I think. What I really enjoy about working on the ship is that there's really a unique set of challenges. On land, you get used to having difficult cases, but even if you're in a hospital, you've got specialists there, you've your scanners there, you've got all sorts of things that make managing what particular difficult case you have so much easier. Whereas at sea, you still are restricted. You don't have access necessarily to a particular specialty that you want. It really makes you use your training and your clinical acumen to work in the context of what information you have and to still get the good outcome. I would be lying if I said the travel wasn't a huge perk, but it's really a lifestyle because your whole life centres around the vessel that you're on. So, it centres around, yes, the travel, but also around the work because you can't separate yourself from it. When you're on land, you can, at the end of the day, lock your office up, get in the car, or the train, or whatever, and go home. And you leave all of the work things at work. And that doesn't happen on a ship. And so, I think, without the work aspect being so positive, it would have been difficult to go back purely for the travel.
Talitha Linehan: Have you ever had an emergency where a patient had to be airlifted from the ship?
Sian Basnett: When we were in Alaska, we did have a situation where we had to change course to a smaller town so that a helicopter could meet us in the town, rather, and land, and then we could do the transfer. The danger always being when you're at sea, you know that the conditions have to be exactly perfect. You can't have too much wind, or the waves can't be too big. You can’t be too far. And there's always the possibility, if something goes wrong, that the helicopter could crash. And so, when we do those kinds of things, we always look at, first of all, what is the safest way that we can do it in the most time-effective way possible. We always try and avoid that kind of thing because obviously even if one person is ill, you still have hundreds of other people who were hoping for a particular route, and it obviously affects their trip as well. But in my experience, but although they’re disappointed, people have been very understanding and very kind about the fact that somebody is requiring us to make this change.
Talitha Linehan: What kind of facilities do you have on the ship? Is it like a mini-hospital?
Sian Basnett: It feels a lot like a rural doctor's office or an urgent care. But having said that, we can do some pretty advanced things. We have hospital-level kind of equipment in terms of if someone needs to be put on a ventilator, for example, and we can keep them on the machine and breathe for them and monitor them until we can send them to an ICU. We can do an X-ray. Ultrasound is becoming more widely available. We can do a full blood count to look for infection, to look for that kind of thing. Or if someone is having a heart attack or something like that, we do have the sort of clot buster and ECGs. For where we are, which is quite often literally the middle of nowhere, we're pretty well equipped and we carry a pharmacy, as well.
