The expansion of Primary Health services from Dubbo to serve six key remote communities in north-west of NSW is an example of the continuing efforts of the RFDS South Eastern Section to meet the needs of our people.
Over the last three years the provision of these clinics has evolved from the delivery of services by a primary health nurse and ad-hoc General Practice clinics, to scheduled, frequent full GP clinics, supported by additional nurse-led clinics and diabetes education.
The Dubbo-based team of four includes Team Leader Kerri Rothery, GPs Dr Paul Lunney and Dr Seamus Barrett, and Primary Health Nurse Abbey Barrett.
The dedication of the team, increase in services and the range of services provided has resulted in an invaluable trust being built within each of those communities, which are all incredibly unique, with different demographics, and their own needs and expectations.
The six communities the Western NSW Primary Health team visit are:
Grawin – an hour south-west of Lightning Ridge
Enngonia – an hour north of Bourke
Weilmoringle -two hours west of Lightning Ridge
Hebel – An hour north of Lightning Ridge, across the Queensland border
Nymagee – three hours west of Dubbo
The Marra – two and half hours north-west of Dubbo, via Nyngan
“The RFDS has been providing fly-in, fly-out clinics to Far West NSW from Broken Hill for decades and these clinics are an integral part of the work we do, in addition to the Emergency Retrievals. We are working hard to produce similar results in the north-west and we are very proud of the result so far,” Kerri said.
“In 2024 we effectively doubled the number of clinics we held across the six sites, compared to 2023 and this resulted in a doubling of the number of patients seen.
“In particular, Grawin, a mining community that is quite isolated and with no access to healthcare without travelling to Lightning Ridge, has increased from 19 clinics and 311 occasions of care in 2023 to 43 clinics and 615 occasions of care in 2024.Enngonia was a jump from nine clinics seeing 96 patients in 2023, to 22 clinics and 298 patients seen in 2024. We are very proud of these outcomes.
“However our work is about more than numbers. The most important thing to all of us is not just providing treatment, but providing care.”
We work with everyone who visits our clinics to improve their health and empower them to stay in their community. We work with so many people to manage chronic illness, but we encourage people to undertake all appropriate screening have also identified and diagnosed cancers and other high acuity diseases that need immediate treatment.
Kerri Rothery
“There is more to come in the future. In the upcoming financial year we will hold Women’s Health Days through the western corridor after receiving funding.
“We are evolving our nurse-led clinics to be more of a focus on education of topics, such as hypertension, diabetes, snake bites or CPR. We also liaise with external stakeholders such as podiatry, dieticians, optometrists and diabetes educators to provide a one-stop shop for people to address a number of concerns."
