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Kirsty Dobson

Kirsty Dobson

Co-founder & Managing Partner of Clarity&, an aviation workplace mental health and wellbeing consultancy. Former NHS leader and therapist specializing in workplace stress, behaviour change, and neuroscience-backed wellbeing strategies.

Jul 24, 2026

12:33
I mean-
12:33
So there is that, that thing about expectations and... 'Cause there is this sort of perception, I think, that aviation is quite glamorous And so, you know, it, depending on how some of this onboarding and training is done now, and often it is remote and offsite and done as e-learning, not as, not as in classroom-based, not sort of around equipment.
12:51
It's all done virtually now.
12:53
That, you know, it's o- only really when they're in that real-life environment that actually they then experience the startle response when they've got this huge jet coming towards them.
13:03
You know, the realities of that environment, the noise, the everything that they're exposed to, the early starts, the bad weather, all of those things suddenly land in that moment.
13:14
So maybe there is a stage that we need to be doing even before we're getting these people into the workplace and, you know, sort of in our r- screening and recruitment processes, to really unders- to understand what their expectations are, um, of that kind of job and, and explain what the role demands, I think.
13:31
So there, there's a transparency that needs to be there from the get-go.
14:56
And can you give us a neurology lesson at, at that level as to what happens to us in a high-stress environment, different parts of the brain, um, kick in as one?

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