As a Cobram High School student, Emma West thought becoming a doctor was an unreachable dream.
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It was only when Donna O’Kane — a year level or two above Emma — got into medicine, that Emma's mindset changed to "maybe I can".
“I didn't think it was achievable for me,” Emma said.
“I always wanted to do medicine but I didn't think I would get the marks and it wasn't until I got the marks that I really acknowledged that’s what I wanted to do.”
But her true inspiration was her dad, Frank West.
“My dad was unwell when he was young, he had a brain tumour when he was five and I think that had an influence on our lives,” she said.
“It always fascinated me and he was sort of an inspiration for me.”
Graduating high school, Emma earned her spot studying medicine at Monash University.
She was over the moon. She made the move to Melbourne, a huge step for the young woman to complete the six-year university degree.
Along with unwavering support from proud parents Frank and Marlene, it was her junior years spent in Geelong that led Emma to the emergency department.
“I've had some amazing mentors there who were emergency physicians and they said, `you know, you're good at this, and maybe you should think about it as a career’," she said.
“I just sat in awe of them, how they would assess and diagnose patients and I just wanted to be exactly like them.
“As I went through the special training program I met more people who just reaffirmed that I was making the right decision.”
Working as an emergency doctor was the perfect job for Emma.
She even won the Buchanan Prize, topping the class in her final emergency medicine training exam across Australia and New Zealand.
Pregnant with her second child, Emma arrived at the Royal Melbourne Hospital emergency department in 2008.
Now a senior emergency doctor and mum of four, her next big role is as the star of TV show Emergency.
For six weeks a television crew followed her every move as she went to work saving lives.
While she described the experience as similar to having a junior doctor or medical student shadowing her, Emma admitted it was a weird feeling to be filmed at first.
“You very quickly forget because you're on task doing things that are far more important, and you just forget that there's a TV camera there,” she said.
“I remember sitting on a really busy Saturday night and I forgot I was mic'd up and I said `oh my God, I'm hungry’ and the next minute a vegetable curry appeared and I'm like, `how did you know?'.''The 10-part series is a true representation of the unpredictable days and nights in one of Australia’s busiest emergency wards.
“Sometimes you’re being pulled in 15 directions at once and then other times you're just slowly moving through the large waiting list of patients,” Emma said.
“You could be going along seeing what we think are simple cases, someone with chest pain, someone with pneumonia and then suddenly you'll get four traumas arriving within an hour and a half and you're just in chaos.”
It is not uncommon for Emma to treat the victims of car crashes and violence.
“I've seen a lot of people from the country,” she said.
“It's always a reminder that country roads are quite over-represented in a lot of the trauma that we see.
“You see a lot of it and you become comfortable with some of the awful things; it can be hard at times but I've got a really supportive network of colleagues, nurses, doctors and friends to talk to if things are tough.”
For Emma, the hardest part of the job is breaking unexpected bad news to families.
“It can be really challenging, particularly when people are completely unaware of what’s happened, but it's almost one of the most important jobs that we have — because if we can deliver the information in a caring, committed way then hopefully we don't add to the trauma of what the family will be experiencing.”
When asked how she felt to be called a hero, Emma brushed it off.
“It's a team effort,” she said.
“For a really sick patient, it can be six or seven people all caring for the patient at once and if it was just me I couldn't do it.
“To look after someone when they're unwell and for them to trust you, it’s an absolute privilege to be able to deliver care to people in need when they are at a difficult point in their life — and so I just remind myself how lucky I am to be able to do the job I do.”
The show was filmed before the COVID-19 pandemic and Emma described the period that followed as a frenzy.
“We've had to really change the way that we work, because we have to protect patients from each other and protect ourselves,” she said.
“We prepared for what we thought was going to be hundreds and thousands of sick patients coming and fortunately that didn't happen, but we're not out of the difficult time yet.”
Tonight Emma will gather around the television with husband Daniel Steinfort and their children Liam, Maggie, Rory and Finn for a family viewing party of her television debut.
“I hope people like it, because I'm pretty proud of where I work, the workday is brilliant and the people I work with are absolutely brilliant.”
Emergency premiers on Nine at 8.30 pm tonight.