We have strong relationships with some of Australia’s leading rural healthcare not-for-profits, united in our efforts to stop location being a barrier to healthcare. This June, we collaborated with one of those partners, the Rural Doctors Network (RDN), to inspire the next generation of medics in the bush.
Our Emergency Doctor, Dr Jessica Kracht, hosted 20 medical, nursing and allied health students participating in RDN’s Go Rural student road trip during their visit to the Royal Flying Doctor Service (RFDS) Dubbo Base.
The Go Rural program undertakes several road trips for mostly metropolitan-based healthcare students each year, as part of RDN’s ongoing commitment to growing and supporting the future rural health workforce, offering students immersive experiences in regional and remote communities across New South Wales. Students travelled through rural NSW, including our service areas like Gilgandra and Bourke.
The visit to the Dubbo base served as a capstone experience, showcasing the scope of RFDS operations and the critical role we play in bridging healthcare gaps in remote Australia.
What does it take to serve Australia’s ‘largest waiting room’?
The RFDS delivers care to 7.7 million square kilometres of the beautiful Australian Outback.
You need state-of-the-art equipment coupled with expert knowledge to bring critical care to a ‘waiting room’ this large. The students saw this firsthand.
As we demonstrated how we use our specialist kit, we delved into anonymised real-life cases and highlighted the complex medical and logistical challenges our teams face, from severe motor vehicle trauma to surgical and medical crises and even delivering babies thousands of kilometres away from specialist care.
One of their biggest learnings was understanding the extensive training, broad clinical knowledge, and high-level decision-making skills required by RFDS doctors, flight nurses, and pilots. Operating in low-resource settings with minimal support demands an exceptional degree of resilience, versatility, and teamwork.
A tour of our retrieval aircraft brought those challenges into sharper focus. Students were amazed by the confined space in which our clinicians must work, particularly during high-stakes retrievals that can last several hours as patients are transferred to tertiary hospitals far from their community.
As someone who once stood in their shoes, dreaming of a career with RFDS, it was both humbling and rewarding to play a small part in inspiring the next generation. This visit was not only a valuable learning opportunity for the students, but also a powerful reminder of why we do what we do.
Dr Jessica Kracht