The dramatic flight this RFDS nurse will never forget

For the flight nurses of Queensland’s Royal Flying Doctor Service, drama often unfolds high above the ground, while the rest of the world goes about its business. Here, Yvette Jenkins recalls the night things could have gone so terribly wrong.

RFDS QSUPER: Yvette Jenkins

For the flight nurses of Queensland’s Royal Flying Doctor Service, drama often unfolds high above the ground, while the rest of the world goes about its business. Here, Yvette Jenkins recalls the night things could have gone so terribly wrong.

Plenty of people gaze skyward searching for their dreams. It could be a young child looking at the stars, imagining they’re on a mission to Mars, or an adventurer itching to test their nerve with a parachute strapped to their back. For Yvette Jenkins it was the drone of the Royal Flying Doctor Service plane bringing salvation to the remote island where she worked that made her look upwards … and it changed her life forever. Yvette has been a nurse for more than 30 years. Caring for people is what she does. But during a stint working in the hospital on Thursday Island in Torres Strait, she realised she wanted to do more. She wanted to be a Royal Flying Doctor Service flight nurse. So in 2007 she reached for the sky and became an RFDS flight nurse, based at Bundaberg. Now, all flight nurses are trained midwives. There’s a good reason for this … a lot of RFDS flights involve transporting high-risk pregnant women from remote locations to hospitals in larger centres. Most are routine jobs. Nothing eventful happens. Mother is delivered to hospital, baby is delivered at hospital, everyone goes home safe and sound. But then there are the ones you never forget. The ones that are touch and go, the ones that could go either way. Yvette’s moment of mayhem came on a chilly winter night and involved picking up two patients for transport to Brisbane – acritically unwell teenage girl in Emerald and a pregnant woman in Hervey Bay. The first leg was easy. The girl in Emerald was stable and heading to Brisbane for treatment. No dramas picking her up. Next stop Hervey Bay. The patient was 28 weeks pregnant but had reported a bit of bleeding and was going to Brisbane as a precaution. The medical staff at Hervey Bay said her cervix wasn’t dilated and there were no contractions, so good to go. Or so they thought. The excitement of the take-off proved too much for baby, and it wanted out. Mum’s water broke the moment they were in the air. RFDS nurses are highly trained and highly skilled. They are elite frontline health practitioners and on about 75 per cent of Flying Doctor flights there’s no doctor flying, just a flight nurse. They have to have the confidence and expertise to make critical decisions that can mean the difference between life and death for patients in their care. Yvette was now in one of those situations. She recalls observing that the mum-to-be was wearing a small pair of shorts and thinking, “Oh my gosh, as soon as I take these little shorts off her, I’m going to have a baby join us mid-flight”. “I had to make a decision there and then to turn around and go back or carry on to Brisbane. The baby was so premature and I knew we just had to go back to Hervey Bay.” Yvette asked the pilot to turn around, then focused her attention to the patient. Before she knew it, the tiny baby was out. Yvette popped bub on to mum’s chest and noted that both were in pretty good shape; others on the plane though, were having conniptions. The teenage girl’s eyes were as wide as saucers while all this unfolded, and she swore then and there she was never going to have a baby. The pilot, too, scrambled back to take a look once the plane was safely on the tarmac. “You know, I’ve never seen a newborn baby this close before,” he told Yvette. Given it was 2am on a freezing winter’s morning, the team kept the aircraft shut up to try and keep the baby warm – “They’re all the little things you don’t think of when you’re in a big hospital when you’re trying to save a little one,” Yvette says. Baby stayed snuggled on mum’s chest, keeping warm until the paramedics arrived. And this is where Yvette recalls her only regret – she never got to see that mum again. An ambulance came out with a paediatrician, and mother and baby were whisked off to hospital. “I didn’t get to see the mum or bub again and I guess that’s one of the downsides of this job, we don’t actually get to followup with our patients. “I still had the 16-year-old girl on the flight so I couldn’t leave the aircraft,” she reminisces. Yvette’s experienced plenty of other extraordinary moments since, but the mum and bub from Hervey Bay have always stayed with her, a life and death drama played out high in the Queensland sky. ■ Yvette Jenkins, 52, is a flight nurse and midwife with the Royal Flying Doctor Service (Queensland Section). QSuper is proud to support RFDS flight nurses like Yvette through essential training, allowing them to manage a wide range of medical scenarios and emergency situations. Learn more at flyingdoctor.org. au/qld/QSuper