Wild weather makes for challenging winter at Rottnest Island Nursing Post

While spring has well and truly sprung on Rottnest Island, the team from the Rottnest Island Nursing Post (RINP) has just experienced one of their most difficult winters on the holiday island.

After working for 10 years at the nursing post, RINP Clinical Nurse Manager Fiona Chisholm said the wild weather, multiple whole island lock downs, airstrip closures and challenging evacuations made for more complex patient retrievals and evacuations.

“The stormy weather this year was nothing like we’d seen before and the wild conditions resulted in island lock downs, wet retrievals and challenging evacuations requiring helicopter hot landings,” Fiona said.

“We had six separate island shutdowns where, due to the weather, there was no ferry travel – this not only effected island visitors but meant our nursing staff were unable to travel to the island for work and those already on the island were required to work extended periods to keep the clinic open.

“This winter we evacuated 20 patients via Royal Flying Doctor Service (RFDS) and RAC Rescue helicopter to tertiary hospitals, and with no ferries, this effected any means of evacuation for stable patients requiring ongoing medical assessment and management.

“Staff were involved in critical decision making regarding whether patients stayed on the island safely without further deterioration or required helicopter evacuation to a tertiary hospital.”

In addition to this, there was also five weeks where the airstrip on the island was closed for resurfacing. This meant the RFDS could not land a fixed wing aircraft for patient evacuation resulting in the RINP team relying solely on helicopter evacuation over this period.

The airport closure required extensive planning with multiple agencies for alternative evacuation points, lighting, and temporary road access.

“There were a few instances with severe wind and rain that the RAC helicopter evacuation was a hot landing – where the patients were transferred to the helicopter whilst the rotor blades were still spinning."

With the seasons changing, the team is preparing for increased day trippers and visitors to the island. With this comes boating, diving, snorkelling, surfing, and jet skiing injuries in addition to push bike, and more increasingly, e-bike accidents.

“We know as the weather warms up that the day tripper numbers can reach in excess of 2,500 visitors on top of increased boat numbers, so we’re putting all our plans and staffing in place to prepare for that.

“While each season brings with it different working scenarios one thing always remains the same - our nursing staff continue to work tirelessly to ensure all our patients receive safe and timely care.”

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