Former nurse develops rural safety app after saving neighbour’s life

Former nurse Robyn Neilson still gets emotional remembering the day she saved her neighbour’s life, 17 years ago. It’s the reason why she’s developing a farm safety smartphone app.

Shine award nominee Robyn Neilson is a former nurse and farm safety advocate who is fundraising to build a rural emergency response smartphone app. Picture: Yuri Kouzmin.

ROBYN Neilson’s memory of the accident is so raw, it’s as if the tragedy happened yesterday.

“I get a bit emotional about it, even 17 years later,” says the former nurse from central Queensland, remembering the day she saved her neighbour’s life. The accident inspired Robyn to advocate for farm safety and push for improvements to remote emergency services.

Robyn Nielsen is nominated for a 2019 Shine Award. Picture: Yuri Kouzmin

In 2002, the Neilsons and Shanns were living on cattle stations north of Clermont, and Robyn received a call from Mac Shann, saying his wife, Gayle, hurt her arm on a post-hole digger.

“When I got there I discovered the horrendous injuries she had suffered,” says Robyn, her voice catching. “Her eye socket was exposed. She had her right arm and shoulder blade torn from her body.”

Robyn kept Gayle alive until the Royal Flying Doctor Service found them, which took an excruciating two hours.

“Some really unorthodox methods were what kept her alive,” Robyn says. “I had to go in to the wound and find the blood vessels and clamp them closed with my fingers.”

Gayle lost her arm. The Shanns’ lives were changed forever; and so was Robyn’s.

She is sharing the story to raise awareness about farm safety and, more importantly, highlight the gap between rural emergency medical services and urban.

It is a gap she wants to narrow by developing a smartphone app, called Rescue 1st, with capability to send location coordinates directly to emergency services, even without a mobile signal.

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Her advocacy work includes lecturing at James Cook University, medical and ag industry conferences.

“The message that I’d really like to get across to people, especially in cities, is that if you really care about the food you eat, you will really care about the families who grow and deliver it.”