Stella McCallum

Stella McCallum was born in Scotland and lived in Perth, Australia for seven years before discovering beautiful Taranaki, where she now resides with her husband and two children.

As the daughter of a nurse and a paramedic, she cannot remember a time when she didn’t know first aid or what to do in an emergency. While other kids played Scrabble, Stella’s family was having fun practising chest compressions, bandaging each other’s limbs and discussing how they would act in an emergency. The family album contains many photographs of young Stella in a nurse’s outfit with a toy stethoscope in one hand and a bandage in the other. It therefore came no surprise that she chose to study nursing and followed this with a degree in health science.

Stella worked as an emergency nurse for seventeen years in Scotland, England and Australia but was always interested in illness prevention and health promotion. This led to her post-graduate qualification in Occupational Health and Safety in Australia. On arrival in New Zealand, she was employed as an occupational health nurse consultant and a volunteer ambulance officer for four years. Currently she is a consultant in a health, safety and environment for a global service company. This role has helped her develop skills in emergency response planning, educating staff to prevent occupational accidents and illnesses and identifying hazards to mitigate risks. She also conducts incident investigations to prevent recurrence.

Prior to undertaking her post-graduate qualification, Stella obtained a diploma in another passion – writing. She has had articles and stories published in the Australian Parenting magazine, Her magazine, the Taranaki Daily News and The Midweek. Stella has also written three short movie scripts for a national film-making competition.

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ambulance    fire    police    safety