With Tuesday (May 12) International Nurses Day and 2020 also designated as the Year of the Nurse and the Midwife by the World Health Organisation, there's never been a better time to talk to a nurse.
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So the North West Star trekked out to the Mount Isa Royal Flying Doctor Service Base at the airport to chat to someone who has been enjoying a great career in nursing for eight years.
Nurses are vital to the RFDS and over three quarters of their flights are nurse and pilot only while one in five staff are nurses.
Loren McIlroy joined the RFDS Queensland Section as a flight nurse a year ago having worked prior to that in Emergency in the Ipswich Hospital.
"I never originally wanted to be a nurse until my mum suggested to me 13 years and I got a letter in the mail from Griffith (University) saying if you don't come back to your Bachelor of Arts we are going to unenrol you," Ms McIlroy. "So I applied for nursing, got accepted and I loved it."
Ms McIlroy worked in emergency departments for seven years until she heard there was a job going at the RFDS in Mount Isa.
"I thought I didn't have enough experience but it turns out I had sufficient amount and they took me on, which was lovely," she said.
"I did a lot of my high school years at a small country town called Nanango but I had to look up where Mount Isa was on a map."
Ms McIlroy said she had her reservations once she found out how far it was from Brisbane, "but then I got here and found out it wasn't too bad".,
It helps that the work is varied and every day at the Base is different with a coverage range of thousands of miles from the Territory to the Coast and from the Gulf to the Simpson Desert.
"Some days you start much earlier than others, some days - and nights - you'll wake up for a phone call," she said.
"But on the Base I'm known as the Teflon Nurse as out of all my colleagues I get called the least."
But Ms McIlroy is keeping busy not only serving as an RFDS nurse, but also in the emergency department at the Mount Isa Hospital and also tutors for the James Cook University campus in town.
This (posting) has opened so many doors for me, both personally and career wise," she said. "As a nurse, we see people in their greatest time of need, so to deliver a service that goes beyond their expectations that's what makes my day."
SEE ALSO: Respiratory clinic set up in Mount Isa
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Derek Barry
Editor of the North West Star Mount Isa since January 2016. Prior to that, an editor at several regional southern Queensland newspapers. Passionate about telling local stories. Comes with a strange accent to due an Irish accident of birth.
Editor of the North West Star Mount Isa since January 2016. Prior to that, an editor at several regional southern Queensland newspapers. Passionate about telling local stories. Comes with a strange accent to due an Irish accident of birth.
