Dr Jim Drum and the RFDS

As senior medical officer, Royal Flying Doctor Service (RFDS), Queensland Section, Charleville Base, Dr Jim Drum (1959-61) covers a region in south-west Queensland larger than Britain.

Jim was formerly a general surgeon on the Gold Coast with a principal interest in breast surgery. With the death of his wife, Sue, in 2001, he headed inland leaving the coast far behind. He first worked in some of the Northern Territory’s most remote areas and from there joined the RFDS in June 2004.

Before taking on this work he reskilled at the Gold Coast Hospital in such areas as anaesthetics, obstetrics, paediatrics and emergency department medicine.

Treating and retrieving patients from remote areas, Jim also provides telemedicine advice to remote area medical clinic nurses and rural property residents. He described his new work as extremely challenging but rewarding because as he put it, “ You never know what will be asked of you and the team on any given day.”

An example of this challenge is shown by his story of having to put in a chest drain on the side of the road working by the lights of a Ute and the stars. The complexity of the challenge was demonstrated when in the Western Desert he treated an indigenous man who had been speared twice in the thigh as a form of tribal payback or punishment. In fact this man was one moment the tribes victim and the next Jim’s patient.

He is a passionate aviator who divides his time at Charleville between his RFDS commitment and the local Aboriginal Medical Service. He says that he undertook the work both as a professional challenge and to fulfil a commitment he had made to himself years before to help communities in need. After flying round western Queensland he realized he didn’t have to go offshore to discover third-world living conditions.

Now at 61, Dr Jim Drum loves his work and new lifestyle. He sums up his lifestyle in these words. “I thought I had the best job in the world when I was working as a general surgeon, but now I really do have the best job in the cosmos.”.

Jim Drum with patients and support staff.