A Day in the Life of a Royal Flying Doctor
G'day team,
Hey team, today I thought I'd follow up on my post about Shill Doctors with another fun post.
Preamble
Because Australia is such a massive country, and because so much of it is so sparsely inhabited, a lot of people live a long way from medical services. As such we have a group called the Royal Flying Doctor Service, who're dispatched to emergencies and fly into remotely located properties to attend to patients.
When I first heard about these kids (at about age 8) I had a very active imagination and though this would be the most epic, awesome, cool job in the world. I want to write about what I envisioned A Day in the Life of a Royal Flying Doctor would be like when I was a far more innocent!
So let's meet our doctor
Stanly McManly, Royal Flying Doctor
Image source
5.00AM
The chatter of Magpies awakes me from my deep slumber and I jump excitedly out of bed. Another day to slay!
Booyah! I'm so friggin pumped! First stop... gotta hit the gym
5.15
Three-hour session at my home gym really gets me pumped.
It's Chest and Arms today... actually, it's Chest and Arms EVERY DAY!
Booyah!
9.00AM
Post gym shower is done, I throw on my doctor suit. Shirt excluded as per McManly protocol.
I wave to my assistants as I take my station - he's busy doing all my paperwork.
Booyah!
9:30 AM
First call of the day. The sirens flash crimson and blue while I leg it to the fireman pole.
My pole leads straight into the cockpit of my personal F-22: Medical Edition.
Thrusters to full, I burn the fuck out of the hanger wall on the way out!
Booyah!
Image source
Image source
9:45 AM
After gaining altitude Jackie from Ground Control calls and informs me I've got a seventeen-car pile up sixty km north of Woop Woop. ETA: 60 minutes.
10:00
Notice a small village on the way and I can tell from the faces of the kids as I fly by (never fly altitude over 50m, 'cause I'm actually afraid of heights) that they're not vaccinated.
I do a quick loop-around and strafe them with a few lines of MMR .50 Cal... for good measure, I VaxBomb the local school with a dTDP scatter charge too.
Booyah!
10.30 AM
Touchdown on the rocky outback desert floor, no problems (runways are for wimps) and pull up next to the scene.
Cars all over the road, blood everywhere. I do a quick count. Twenty-two patients on death's door. Gotta take action straight away.
I whip out my Tourniquet 2000 full automatic and let rip, binding up every limb within a 200m radius, 'cause fuck bleeding. I let out a battle cry and start ripping bodies from the wreckage.
Half the patients have come-too and made a full recovery, simply due to my inspiring presence. I line up my remaining eleven and get to work.
It's pretty clear to my trained eye that four need emergency surgery for... some stuff, so I throw them next to each other. I also have two patients without heartbeats, so I put them together too. The rest just have broken and missing limbs.
I position myself with my knees on the chests of the two heartbeat-less patients and start knee-CPR while I whip out my scalpel and get cutting on the four who need surgery.
A minute later I hear a cough and the patient I've been CPR-ing bursts back to life. He jumps up and starts thanking me profusely. I keep focused on my quadruple surgery.
I've re-organized the innards of all four of my surgical patients and three will be fine. The fourth desperately needs a kidney transplant. I eye the crowd... and my expertly trained eyes spot a match.
I approach the man and lick his face just for good measure... tastes like a match too!
I ask him to stay still and approach from behind. A flash of a blade and my trademark pincer hand movement and he's down one kidney and hasn't even noticed I've touched him!
Two minutes later the kidney's got a new home and just for good measure, my last heartbeat-less patient has come around as well.
I get started sewing limbs back on and re-aligning bones.
Four minutes later I've got eleven stable patients and I'm ready for transfer.
I get everyone to pile into one of the vans from the wreck and attach a ten-meter rope from the towbar to my wing. Take off is complicated, and landed is even worse, but I get everyone home for dinner that night.
2.00 PM
As I re-enter the hanger there's a cheering crowd and a man in a suit hands me an envelope of money.
I toss my helmet cam to my assistant so he can do my notes and head back to the gym.
2.15 PM
Chest and Arms
Booyah!
5:00 PM
Done for the day. I spend the evening chilling and hit the sack at 10:00. Ready for another ripper day tomorrow!
Thanks
Thanks team, hope you had fun reading.
Read on for just a little info on what the Royal Flying Doctors Service actually does :P
Thanks
-tfc
Bonus Content - The Real RDFS
The RFDS is a real service which has been active in Australia since 1917 and for the last 100 years has been providing medical access to all of this!
With a fleet of 66 planes, the RFDS is often the only option for people living out bush. With doctors, nurses and pilots the planes carry emergency medical equiptment such as ventilators and defibrilators to make sure on-site emergency management is always an option!
A great fun read! Royal Flying Doctors do some great work and deserve all the help they can get for an organization that is supporting so many rural areas.
Thanks, VoH, I agree, they're awesome and hard-working people who support so many from so far!
Hilarious post. Didn’t even know this service was a real thing. Thanks for sharing
That's one pumped up doc. :D :D
Pretty standard for Aussie doctors :p
Another amazing article :)
Amazingly here in Europe we know little to none about Australia's services or policies. I do know everything about the natural beauty and millions of places from documentaries but nothing about services.
Imagine my shock when I saw a BBC Money documentary that showed a crying old couple trying to minimize the use of electricity due to its cost and scarcity. And the Energy Minister or whoever that was that was cornered by the reporter for doing nothing.
We have a lot of work to do in the coming year if we are to progress the human development. Starting with mentality and with volunteering more and helping others. I am trying to set up a project which I hope will take off next week. Maybe others can learn from it.
Hey man! You're right, Australia is definitely a country with problems. We've got a huge gap between the rich and the poor, and because of a trick the Liberals (the name for our conservative government) did to reduce the taxes payed by people who own more than ONCE property, property prices are insane. As such people on lower incomes are forced out of cities to rural areas where housing may be cheaper but everything else is more expensive!
Keep me posted about your project mate! I'm working closely alongside Voice of Health here on steemit and I know the guys IRL too, they're always looking for more stories and input so keep us poster :)
I have posted something and I will have more for you in the next few weeks. Trying to take Steemit to the poor retired teachers or engineers that the state neglected and which are living with 150$ per month. Then use their time (which we clearly don't have) and expertise ( they are qualified but forgotten by the system) to spread Steemit and reach even to the rural areas where the majority lives with NO income or only social support ( which is small considering it's an Eastern Europe country ). Well this is my life project laid out :D
Or maybe I am just naive :)
Haha nah mate I've got faith! Sounds like an awesome project, and good luck with it all. There's so much knowledge out there that's just neglected!
Fascinating solution to a problem that many large countries face. In the US, we've seen a major decline in rural doctors and it's had a negative impact. Glad to see Australia handling the problem. We could borrow that idea.
Yeah, it's a big problem worldwide. Australia still has huge problems with getting enough doctors rural. I'm working in a small hospital in a little town at the moment, we've two doctors rotating 12-hour shifts and on call 24/7.
But yep, the RFDS do a great job and really help with those isolated areas!
nice...✌✌