I am a third-year nurs­ing stu­dent study­ing at Edith Cow­an Uni­ver­si­ty in Perth. Since head­ing down the nurs­ing path­way I always imag­ined myself work­ing in remote com­mu­ni­ties as

I have a pas­sion for Abo­rig­i­nal health as well as crit­i­cal care and men­tal health.

When my uni­ver­si­ty put out an expres­sion of inter­est to com­plete a four-week place­ment with the Roy­al Fly­ing Doc­tors Ser­vice (RFDS) based out of Meekathar­ra, a small town in the mid­dle of West­ern Aus­tralia with a pop­u­la­tion of 700 peo­ple, of course, I jumped at it.

On the long eight-hour dri­ve there, as the soil got red­der and trees turned into shrubs, I was won­der­ing what I had got­ten myself into.

How­ev­er, those feel­ings quick­ly dis­ap­peared when I was wel­comed with open arms into the Meekathar­ra com­mu­ni­ty and RFDS family.

My first few days of fly­ing were phys­i­cal­ly exhaust­ing, and I was con­cerned I would not be able to cope with the rest of the placement.

I hadn’t ful­ly appre­ci­at­ed the effect work­ing at alti­tude and in extreme­ly high tem­per­a­tures would have on me.

How­ev­er, after some point­ers from the crew, accli­ma­tis­ing myself and increas­ing my water intake the shifts got easier.

A usu­al day involved my pre­cep­tor and I being on call from 6am until 10am. If we weren’t tasked by then we would go into the base and do checks, or train­ing until a job came in. The Meekathar­ra base only has two PC-12 air­craft which are sin­gle-engine tur­bo­prop aero­planes. In the back, there are two stretch­ers, three seats, and not much room to move! Most morn­ing flights were nurse only which meant occa­sion­al­ly we took three patients if one could sit, but most flights were either one or two stretchered patients.

I thor­ough­ly enjoyed the vari­ety of patients I saw and not know­ing what each day would bring. My favourite jobs were to very remote com­mu­ni­ties includ­ing War­bur­ton and Giles.

We were always greet­ed with such warmth and excite­ment and I loved hear­ing the sto­ries and expe­ri­ences of the peo­ple liv­ing there. I learnt so much about Abo­rig­i­nal cul­ture and the impor­tance of prac­tis­ing in a cul­tur­al­ly-safe way.

I also gained a huge appre­ci­a­tion for the Remote Area Nurs­es, who often care for very sick peo­ple with lim­it­ed resources and may have to wait hours for the patient to be transferred.

It was very dif­fer­ent from what I had expe­ri­enced so far in met­ro­pol­i­tan hos­pi­tals, and a huge eye-opener.

I feel incred­i­bly lucky to have been able to work with such pas­sion­ate and high­ly skilled nurs­es, doc­tors and pilots. Giv­en the com­plex­i­ties of fly­ing in a small air­craft I quick­ly learnt from the crew how impor­tant it was to be pre­pared for a patient to dete­ri­o­rate, even when they are hemo­dy­nam­i­cal­ly sta­ble and look well, such as hav­ing med­ica­tions ready, equip­ment checked, and a clear plan to ensure the best outcomes.

I also learnt the sig­nif­i­cance of com­mu­ni­cat­ing with the patients about what was hap­pen­ing, where they were being trans­ferred to, and pro­vid­ing reas­sur­ance. For many of our patients, this was already one of the worst days of their life, and now they were being flown hun­dreds of kilo­me­tres away from their home in a tiny plane with total strangers and were under­stand­ably scared. When you can alle­vi­ate a bit of that fear and pro­vide them with the care they need, it’s a real­ly good feeling.

This place­ment, assist­ed by a CRANAplus spon­sored Under­grad­u­ate Remote Place­ment Schol­ar­ship, has been one of the great­est expe­ri­ences of my life and I wish it didn’t have to end. Not only have I gained invalu­able nurs­ing skills, but I’ve also made friends for life, seen places I nev­er could have imag­ined and con­firmed that rur­al nurs­ing is where I belong.