Community
5 March, 2025
Best decision I ever made: RFDS nurse loving life in Outback
The Mount Isa nurse manager says there's no looking back after making the move four years ago.
Moving to Mount Isa was the best decision Jamie-Lee McCall has made.
“I moved here four-and-a-half years ago and it’s the best job in the world,” the Royal Flying Doctor Service nurse manager said.
“I’ll be here for a long, long time into the future.”
Jamie-Lee said working in the bush had always been a dream.
“I decided to apply for a job with the RFDS because I was at that point in my life where I needed a bit of a challenge,” she told North West Weekly at the RFDS hangar in Mount Isa.
“I always dreamt about working in a regional area, and the only thing that held me back was I had dogs.
“Before RFDS I was working as a nurse; I was working as a midwife in several different hospitals but pretty much in Brisbane.”
Luckily for Jamie-Lee, she didn’t have to undertake any additional training to join the Flying Doctors.
To be an RFDS flight nurse you also need to be a midwife.
“I’d already done that training before even thinking about becoming a flight nurse so I was already upskilled in that department,” she said.
“It was just working in an ED (emergency department), which I’d already done, but I needed a few more months because you need a certain amount of hours.
“From there, I kept in contact with the RFDS, decided it was time and they said I had enough hours and these are where we’ve got job opportunities.”
Jamie-Lee can still remember her first callout.
“I do remember my first flight, it was one of my first days,” she recalled of her trip to Julia Creek.
“It was hot. I moved here in December and it was 45 degrees.
“I’d never experienced anything like that in my life.
“We literally got diverted mid-flight. I was orientating with another flight nurse and we had a doctor on board.
“We were going to another location, but got a phone call mid-flight to say there was a patient who had sustained airway burns after they got chased down by a grass fire and was quite unwell.
“We hadn’t picked up the (original) patient so they literally called us on the satellite phone on the plane and said ‘can you actually go here instead’.
“So we did and then we ended up taking that patient to Townsville and got back to Mount Isa quite late.”
Her most memorable flight was a trip to the Gulf in 2023 when she was called up to treat a helicopter pilot who crashed in a remote area.
“You never know what’s going to happen ... most crashes like that are generally fatal,” she said.
“We’re in the sky, taken off from Mount Isa, within 15 minutes of receiving that first call.
“We had to fly to a station and then drive another half an hour, 40 minutes to the patient who was still in the helicopter cockpit.
“He was alert, he was orientated, had sustained some fractures and breaks that were quite bad (and) some head injuries, but we were able to retrieve him and fly him back to Mount Isa and then on to Townsville for surgery, which he’s lived to tell the tale.
“Ultimately it’s very rewarding to see an experienced pilot get back in the helicopter and continue doing what he loves.”
Being adaptable in difficult conditions is what makes the Flying Doctors a world leader in aeromedical services.
“In this instance, it was a station that called the RFDS medical officer directly and from there we were able to land at the station and be met with some station hands,” Jamie-Lee recalled.
“We loaded all our gear and equipment, as well as the patient bed from the aircraft, into the back of the ute, and then we travelled to this field to be greeted with the scene of the patient still in the helicopter.
“Then you’ve got other obstacles of broken glass, snakes, long grass up to your knees ... it’s just unreal.”
Having a personal connection to the patients was another element not found in Brisbane hospitals.
“I’m forever being stopped in the supermarket, at RFDS events and balls, just from relatives of patients, or patients themselves, thanking me for what I’ve done and how I’ve helped them in critical times,” Jamie-Lee said.
“It’s very rewarding.”
The nurse manager also had another string to her bow as a therapy dog trainer and owner.
“Lulu is a 14-month-old groodle, so a golden retriever/poodle that I purchased a year ago,” she said.
“I decided when I picked her at 12 weeks of age, that I was going to make her a therapy dog.
“She’s now graduated and I’ve started bringing her to the workplace once or twice a month just for staff wellbeing and to create a really good workplace culture.”
