Sitting at the traffic lights in the heart of Brisbane Kathryn Hines realised she wanted more.
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In fact it was the red dirt, the open spaces and rugged terrain of Broken Hill that was calling her.
So she packed up her life and left her job as an intensive care unit (ICU) nurse and headed west to join the Royal Flying Doctor Service (RFDS) medical team.
"I was in Broken Hill as a student when I finished my nurse training and I loved it," Kathryn said.
"There is just something about the red dirt."
Kathryn, 37, began her nursing career 16 years ago when she trained in western Sydney before moving to Brisbane.
She spent eight years in Queensland as an Emergency Nurse Technician, plastic surgical nurse and also spent time in intensive care.
"There is a big discrepancy with city hospitals and the regions," Kathryn said.
"There is such a big need for clinicians out here and I felt my skills were more important here than in the city."
When she first arrived in Broken Hill in 2017, she worked in the ICU at the hospital.
At the time to become a flight nurse she needed to study midwifery, so she went to Orange and trained before coming back to the Silver City.
It was then she got a start with the RFDS.
She underwent training with doctors doing simulations for car accidents, poisonings and drownings while also swimming in a pool with a life vest as well as working out how the plane and medical packs worked.
"About 80 per cent of the time it's just you and the pilot on retrievals, the rest of the time the doctor is there, so you need to work together to get it done," Kathryn said.
"I always knew the medical side of the job would be fine as I had been a clinician for years.
"It was getting used to small space, and essentially you are trained to be a cabin crew.
"So I can show you that your exits are here and there, and all that kind of stuff."
Then it was six weeks' training with a flight nurse before embarking on her first solo flight with a doctor and pilot.
"The first time I sat in a plane I thought, what am I doing?" she said.
"It's super small. How am I going to get anything done?
"I found I ended up with lots of bruises bumping into everything because of the confined space."
Her first job was heading to a 'big trauma' car accident on an isolated road in the middle of the night.
"It wasn't near an airstrip so we needed to work out how we would get from the airstrip to the accident," she said.
"Someone came with a ute so we could fit our stretcher on the back of the tray.
"On jobs like this you have to think outside the box for logistics.
"It can be the trickiest part of the job, you have to think of all the things that can be thrown at you and work out the logistics.
"If people don't have a ute, we can fit our stretchers in the back of a Toyota Sahara on an angle and we've used a pillow to kneel on to work."
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One of the first things people ask Kathryn when they find out she is a RFDS nurse is: Have you had a baby on the plane yet?
"I was close but the mother ended up having the baby in the Adelaide hanger on approach," she said.
"We got there in the nick of time, I was the only midwife so it worked out well.
"I ran into the family a few weeks later at the airport getting coffee, it was lovely to see them happy and healthy."
She added that a team would try and do everything on the ground before take off due to atmospheric pressure.
At different levels in the air it can affect a patient's oxygen levels.
"So you have to think about that depending on where we are going, if it's a quick trip to Menindee you don't go high, about 8000 feet,' she said.
"If Adelaide it's 25,000 feet, when if you are in the air oxygen levels change, which can make it worse if someone is sick.
"When someone is really unwell we might have to go about 16,000 instead of 25,000 feet, which might take longer to get to a place but it's better atmospheric pressure.:
Other things she has to take into consideration are the vibrations on the plane and how it affects patients as well as claustrophobia.
Kathryn became a RFDS nurse for the challenge - and that is exactly what she got.
No day is the same.
And sometimes you are greeted like a superstar.
"Everyone is happy to see us, they prefer us to a hospital.," she said.
But the best thing about the job, Kathryn said, was the people she gets to meet.
"People in the bush are resilient, they adapt to situations," she said.
"They band together in tough times and are quick to help in a crisis.
"On a massive trauma incident, everyone comes to help, you don't get that in the city.
"If you are thinking about this job and feel you couldn't do it, don't think that, it's certainly doable.
"And you never know where it will take you."
- The RFDS currently has exciting opportunities for doctors, both retrieval registrars and general practitioners, as well as flight nurses. If you would like to learn more about these or other opportunities with the RFDS, please contact careers@rfdsse.org.au.
