Flight nursing down under: a perspective

The purpose of this paper is to describe in the broadest sense the scope of flight nursing practice in the Western Australian context. The Royal Flying Doctor Service--Western Operations provides aeromedical and associated health services, through primary health clinics to persons living in remote and rural areas of Western Australia. Flight nurses provide a significant contribution to fulfilling the core business of the Royal Flying Doctor Service, and in doing so demonstrate that they are able to combine the diversity and speciality that is flight nursing, with the challenges not only of the aviation environment, but of the diversity and remoteness of the physical environment that they may find themselves in.