S.TRUEMAN PhD THESIS 2016

243

Table 7.1 Royal Flying Doctor Service Emergency Evacuations, 2013–2014 (Source: RFDS Annual Report, 2014)

For the year ended 30 June 2014 Service Area km² 7,150,000

Daily Average

Year

Number of aircraft

N/A

63

Distance flown (total) (km)

72,358

26,410,611 72,357.39

Average flown per RFDS aircraft (km)

1,148.53

Number of landings (total)

206

75,314

7.4.3 Others Family members or significant persons known to mental health patients are a significant resource for remote nurses delivering mental healthcare. A participant psychiatrist reinforced this point in answering the question: What are the skills required by remote nurses in handling mental health crisis? [In] a remote setting, [not] so much the fancy clinical skills but just your ability to know who’s the important person in the family. If it’s an Indigenous remote setting, who’s the important person? Who’s the uncle to get down to calm the person down, because they’re the only one they’ll listen to? You don’t need to train as a psychiatrist or a psych nurse to know that stuff. [T24, p. 6] Another resource is community members and volunteers. Again, these groups take on ever increasing importance as numbers of fellow remote nurses decreases. Hence, in times of crisis, the remote nurse needs to access and marshall these human resources to make up the deficiency of not having colleagues nearby: