Kensington nurse raises funds for life-saving rural healthcare

At this year’s Run Melbourne, Kensington local and proud Royal Flying Doctor Service member Ruth Coleman ran five kilometres and raised funds for the lifesaving services she helps provide every day.

Run Melbourne is an annual fundraising event, encouraging people of all abilities to run through city streets and raise money for charities of their choosing.

At this year’s event on July 13, around 28,000 participants ran through the city in support of more than 360 charities, completing one of three distances – five kilometres, 10km or a half-marathon.

Among the crowd was local Kensington woman Ruth Coleman, who raised funds for the Royal Flying Doctor Service (RFDS) – a revered charity dedicated to making healthcare as accessible as possible for people living in rural and remote areas.

While it’s perhaps most well-known for flying sick and injured people to larger hospitals for life-saving medical intervention, Ms Coleman stressed that the organisation did so much more than this.

Its other services include providing dentistry vans in small country towns, organising transport by car to appointments for people who otherwise could not get to them, and even flying in teams of nurses and doctors to provide general checkups.

“Prevention is better than cure,” Ms Coleman said, adding “we don't want to be waiting 'til we're having to evacuate them at 2am because they're really unwell.”

“It’s not just about saving lives but delivering general medical care to those who need it,” she said.

It comes as no surprise that Ms Coleman, who has been a part of the RFDS for 10 years, and a nurse for 15, is determined to raise money for this cause, using her hobby of running to do so.

While stressing she wasn’t a hardcore runner, she said that to her, running was about more than going as fast and as far as possible.

She said her enjoyment for running began at Park Run, a free weekly community running event in parks and outdoor spaces across the country. Every weekend, Ms Coleman shows up with a friend to this “big community event.”

“It encourages everyone to get out and give it a go, and you can go get a coffee at a nice café afterward and it's great,” she said.

“I'm not an elite athlete. You don't have to be an elite athlete to go or spend lots of money buying fancy shoes to compete in these runs to raise money for a charity by running or just run for yourself.”

“Just get out there, have fun with it, and have a go.” •