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History
The History of The Royal Flying Doctor Service of Australia inseparable connected with John Flynns life. John Flynn is the, you can say, the inventor of the RFDS.
He was born at Moliagul in Centeral Victoria on 25. November 1880.
His Mother Rosetta died, when he was three, and after this cruel event,
he lived several years with his relatives in Snake Gully. Later the Flynn Family
moved to the western suburbs of Melbourne. After finishing school in 1898 he began teaching at secondary school. In 1903 he decided to study for priest and after that he took a 4 year course in divinity.
In 1911 he got his first job at Beltana Mission in the north of South Australia.
Than in 1912 he became Superintendent of the Australian Inland Mission (AIM).
At this time John Flynn began his missionary work. Only two doctors were supplying an area of 300.000 sq kms in Western Australia and
1.500.000 sq kms in Northern Territory. He began to build up hospitals and hostels in the further outback areas. To illustrate the need of quick medical help in the outback Flynn told many stories.
In 1903 the first powered air flight took place. John Flynn saw the potentials in these inventions to give quick medical help in the outback. During this time a young Lieutenant, Clifford Peel, a medical student, heared of Flynns ideas and wrote a letter to him. He told that aeroplanes would overcome many of the transport problems of the inland and that radio is the best way to communicate.
Peel wanted to come to Australia to help Flynn to establish medical help in the Outback. But, whyever, he was killed when he flew over the German lines short time before World War I ended, so he never arrived in Australia.
Nevertheless his ideas are still the principles of RFDS. After Peels dead Flynn tryed to realize Peels and his ideas. He met Hudson Fysh, a pilot, who founded Quantas,which was a small bushline at this time, and they developed the idea further. On 15 May 1928, the Aerial Medical Service was established. The first Flight of the new Service was on 17th May from Cloncurry to Julia Creek.
The first year was very successful. In this time 50 flights were made, 18,000 miles were flown, 225 ill persons got help and at least 5 lives were saved.
All these flights were done from central Service base Cloncurry.
So the temporary experiment became a constant service.
In the following years the service growed more and more. It was founded by puplic donations and government support. The service got much help, so that many new bases could be established. In 1934 the Presbyterian Church gave the Service a new name, it was named Australian Medical Service. 8 years later in 1934 the Service was renamed again by the Queen, who gave the Service it\'s final name, Royal Flying Doctor Service.
Communication
In the first years it was very hard to communicate with the patients or other bases. Flynn saw the solution of their problem in the wireless communication, which was very expensive and hard to operate. But they needed a transceiver, that could be operated by an untrained person and has it\'s own power generation. This equipment was invented by Alf Traeger.
With this invention the communication was ensured.
Today only 2% of the calls come in by radiotransmisson, because mobilephones got more and more popular.
Medicine
To ensure a quick medical help, a RFDS sister developed the RFDS body chart. This body chart divides the body in sections so that the patient can already tell the base operator by number where it hurts and the doctor already knows what to do when he arrives. On a RFDS plane is everything you need to give first aid and reanimate a patient until he is in a hospital or RFDS base. In the past a first aid action including bandages and other first aid material costed about 12 dollars. Now the actions are mostly paid by health insurance or the patient. Worth mentioning is that nurses hadn\'t been used by the service until the 1960\'s.
At the end of my report I want to show you the area in which the RFDS operates.
Today the RFDS has 45 aircraft operating out of 19 bases, covers more than 80% of the continent- 7.150 million sq kms- and provides 24 hour a day, 7 day a week emergency and consultative medical service to everyone, who lives or travels in the outback.
In this year on the 15 May was the 74th Birthday of the RFDS!!
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