Q&A: Meredith Staib, CEO, Royal Flying Doctors Qld, 52

Meredith Staib on the surprising work the Royal Flying Doctor Service is doing, the big challenges, and a new role for drones.

Rewarding career: Meredith Staib

What was your first encounter with the Royal Flying Doctor Service? Early on, as a registered nurse on the Sunshine Coast I did helicopter retrieval work from Nambour Hospital. I would have liked to work for the RFDS but I didn’t have midwifery training; I managed to make my way back at a much later date.

Do you thrive in an emergency? As a nurse I was always attracted to critical care – the pointy end of it – and I suppose that really set me up for my corporate career [with global insurers]. At Zurich, I co-ordinated medical retrievals across the globe and when I was CEO at Cover-More the Nepal earthquake happened; we chartered an aircraft and evacuated policyholders back to Australia. Being able to bring people home to their families – there’s probably nothing more rewarding than that.

People might think the RFDS is all high drama and outback glamour. What’s the reality? We’re well known for the red dust and the aircraft and those emergency responses, but the service really has expanded since it began in 1928. We do a lot of work around primary health care, mental health, dental programs; in one year the Queensland service administered over 10,000 Covid vaccinations. In some communities, we provide all the medical care and in others we have partnerships with providers on the ground. The support we get in those locations is incredible: they will clear a runway for us, make lunch for the team, pick you up from the airport and take you to the clinic, fundraise...

The service has been voted “Australia’s most reputable charity” 10 times in a row. What’s your secret? We have incredible staff: pilots, doctors, nurses, mental health clinicians, dental teams. But the key is we’ve enjoyed exceptional community support. We’ve been doing this for a long time, and we’re trusted to deliver critical services.

You’re interested in innovative technology. What role can drones play? We see applications for drones around restocking our 1200 medical chests in remote locations across Queensland; also potentially delivering vaccines and surveying runways. How to cover long distances safely is the issue we’re watching very closely right now; it’s a vast state, but the technology is developing quickly.

What’s the hardest part of your job? The last two years have definitely been a bit more challenging, with Covid and the recent floods. And there’s exponential need for health care in rural and remote Australia. That’s a challenge, but also gives us the opportunity to push for more services to ensure equitable health care for people in remote areas.

If you could time-travel and spend 10 minutes with founder Reverend John Flynn, what would you tell him? I’d tell him about the vastness of the service across the country now. And the fact that in Queensland we do just as many mental health consultations in a year – more than 1200 – as we do retrieval flights. He’d be interested to hear that.

What’s the best part of the job? Having the opportunity to go out to these communities; it’s incredibly rewarding to see the service in action. People talk about the relief they feel when the see the flying doctor coming in to land. It’s great to be able to witness that first hand.