By Dongyun Kwon
Don Valley resident Lynette Ward has received the Bernice Jenkins Volunteer Award for her contribution to the Royal Flying Doctor Service (RFDS) Victoria’s Flying Doctor Memory Lane program.
The Bernice Jenkins Volunteer Award is named in honour of the late Bernice Jenkins OAM, the Flying Doctor’s longest-serving and most influential volunteer.
The award was given to the recipients during the annual John Flynn Luncheon on Thursday 30 November.
Award winner Lynette Ward said she was amazed because she didn’t know she was going to receive an award.
“They told us that they were going to come in to do first aid and they were really pulling our legs because they wanted to give us the award surprisingly,” Ms Ward said.
Ms Ward and her pair Craig Watts have transported dozens of Victorians in end-of-life or palliative care to a place of personal significance with dignity, safety and empathy, allowing people one last chance to go down memory lane with family and friends throughout the Flying Doctor Memory Lane.
RFDS Victoria communication, brand and engagement manager Jonathan Green said people who are in palliative or end-of-life care want to get back home, beach or do something simple for the last time.
“Lynette is part of our patient transport team, so she works on the road with non-emergency patient transport, but she volunteers her time for Memory Lane transport,” he said.
“She’s giving up all of her time for free to be a person who’s got medical and paramedic ability to support these people when they go on these journeys.”
Ms Ward works for the Healesville Hospital as a nurse and for the RFDS Victoria as a patient transport officer and said she found the service very special and fun.
“Being on the road with taking palliative patients and other patients is a special thing to be able to give someone the last journey out of hospital taking them away from the medical scene, letting them have fun with their family,” she said.
“They welcome us into their family. Even though we are strangers to them, they still treat us like we’re one of them in their family.
“We just love seeing their happiness, smiles and their time spent with their family.”
Ms Ward has volunteered for the Flying Doctor Memory Lane for over a year.
She said she remembered one special moment when she helped a lady and her husband enjoy a day at the beach where they could be husband and wife instead of carer and patient.
“We took the lady to a beach holiday, it was down at Port Fairy, we had the drive all the way from Mitcham to Saint Arnaud to collect her, then from Saint Arnaud to Port Fairy and on our way home from Port Fairy and we took her to Horsham Hospital where she had some cancer treatment,” she said.
“We were involved in everything that she needed to do for that one day including a hospital visit.
“As we left their beach home they hired in Port Fairy, she turned around and said ‘thank you very much for giving me my husband back after being my carer for the last 12 months’.”
The pair also actively help promote the service, speaking at conferences and events and taking part in media opportunities to spread the word.
Mr Green said Ms Ward is a caring, generous and passionate person who is essential to run the service.
“It is important to have volunteers for the Flying Doctor Memory Lane because we can’t take a standard ambulance and a staff member off the road that might be needed for something else, so we have special ambulances which look different and they (Ms Ward and Mr Watts) choose to do this in their own time,” he said.
“One of the transports that Lynette has done ended up taking 14 hours. They drove up to Rochester to pick a woman up to her son’s wedding which was an hour away and they waited for her for another four hours at the wedding and took her back to Rochester and back to Melbourne.”
