CareFlight nurse Nadine Tipping helping remote and rural patients

Delivering babies on airstrips by a torchlight. Being the first to respond to major emergencies and accidents. Landing on remote dirt airstrips. It’s all part of the job for Nadine Tipping.

Airborne: Flight nurse Nadine Tipping pictured in the CareFlight helicopter on the way to a job. She is based in Darwin and has responded to crisis in Australia and the Pacific. Picture: Supplied

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DELIVERING babies on airstrips by a torchlight. Being the first to respond to major emergencies and accidents. Landing on remote dirt airstrips in the middle of the night to reach patients in need.

 

It’s all part of the job for Nadine Tipping.

The 44-year-old is a flight nurse with CareFlight, the critical care aeromedical retrieval service and charity.

Based in Darwin, Nadine and a pilot fly by helicopter to help treat or evacuate patients across the Top End of the Northern Territory, parts of Western Australia and the islands off the coast. Nadine describes it as working to “bridge the gap between what is available in remote areas to what is available in the city, so getting people to the right place at the right time when the care can’t be provided any longer in the remote communities”.

“Knowing you’ve made a difference in someone’s life, even in such a short period of time, it’s really rewarding,” she said.

 

 

The Victorian native, who grew up in Rochester and went to university and later worked in Bendigo, has trained and worked in critical care, neonatal intensive care, midwifery, child and family health, and rural and isolated practice.

She also volunteers with AUSMAT (Australian Medical Assistance Teams) and went to Vanuatu and Fiji after cyclones hit the Pacific Islands, and last year went to Samoa to assist with a measles outbreak.

“I like being able to provide care for people that don’t normally have that access to it, and knowing that I can make a difference with my knowledge and experience to people in remote or underdeveloped areas such as developing countries,” she said.

Nadine is a nominee in The Weekly Times Shine Awards, supported by Harvey Norman.

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