The Royal Flying Doctor Service came by today. While the property doesn’t have an airstrip for the Flying Doctors’ plane to land, it is close enough to Broome that it is within helicopter range. They provide each station with a huge medical chest full of everything that could possibly be needed in a medical emergency - prescription drugs, non-prescription drugs, injection equipment, bandages, etc etc. Once a year the Flying Doctors make a home visit where they go through the box, give the people at the station training on how to use it, and check for expired medications (and make sure the morphine hasn’t mysteriously gone missing).
The Flying Doctors trainers came in the form of a retired nurse and her husband who travel around the Kimberley and do the rounds of the remote stations. They are often on the road for ten days at a time and camping by the side of the road.
Since I am now officially the back-up if anything goes wrong, I got to sit in on the training. Around the “out-door kitchen table” we methodically went through the whole medical chest, the procedures for getting over-the-phone prescriptions for the medications, how to give injections, how the treat a snake bit, how to give CPR. In the end I got a lovely certificate AND a free mini first aide kit. Oh, and I know what to do in an emergency, but the free mini first aide kit was the best bit.
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