A doctor has described the harrowing scenes inside a Sydney hospital’s emergency department, including how victims had to be repeatedly resuscitated after the horrific attack at Westfield Bondi Junction.
Trauma surgeon Dr Anthony Chambers was on duty at St Vincent’s Hospital in Darlinghurst, about 10 minutes from the scene of the attack, and was finishing an appendix operation at around 4pm on Saturday when chaos broke out.
“My phone, our surgical registrar’s phone, the anesthetist’s phone, our trauma alert went off and I knew something really bad had happened,” Dr Chambers said. the ABC 7.30.
As the situation developed, St Vincent’s was said to be expecting five patients, all critical.
It was just one of six Sydney hospitals that would treat the 18 victims stabbed by the lone knife-wielding man in the busy shopping centre, six of whom tragically died.
Dr Anthony Chambers was the on-call trauma surgeon at St Vincent’s Hospital on Saturday.
Eighteen people were stabbed by a lone man at Westfield Bondi Junction in an attack that left Sydney reeling (pictured: paramedics at the scene)
“When I got to the emergency department we had already received our first patient,” Dr. Chambers said.
“And then the team was actively resuscitating that patient and I went right in to help with that.”
Part of his job as the lead surgeon on duty is to evaluate patients, coordinate treatment, and assign the hospital’s limited staff and life-saving equipment as needed, a task made more difficult by not knowing what injuries the next patients might have. that they arrive.
“We just worked methodically to do the initial resuscitation of those patients, taking them to our CT scanner for a full body scan to get a better appreciation of the injuries and resuscitate them (again),” Dr. Chambers said.
One of the most urgent tasks to stabilize patients, he said, is to replace lost blood to prevent organs from failing.
“We then moved them to our operating room and intensive care unit so they could undergo definitive surgery to stop the bleeding from their stab wounds,” Dr. Chambers said.
While doctors, nurses, surgeons and anesthetists worked feverishly with patients, social worker Scarlett Sebastopoulos was part of the staff helping the desperate relatives who had come to the hospital.
St Vincent’s was one of six hospitals taking in patients from Saturday’s attack.
Scarlett Sebastopoulos told ABC it was a privilege to help families as a social worker at the hospital.
Many were unsure of their loved ones’ injuries or even if they were at the correct hospital their family member had been taken to.
Sevestopoulos said his main goal was to calm confused family members by taking them to a quieter area of ​​the hospital and potentially get them to stop searching their phones for information online that could be distressing or inaccurate.
He described the work he does helping families overcome such heartbreaking events as a “privilege.”
Eight hours after the first patient arrived, the situation was under control enough for staff to take a breather and get their bearings.
On Thursday, hundreds of people will gather at Westfield Bondi Junction in the eastern suburbs to pay their respects to those affected by Saturday’s attack, with black ribbons displayed inside the centre.
The reopening will mark almost a week since six people were killed when Joel Cauchi, 40, was stabbed.
Bondi Junction’s Oxford Street shopping center has become a sea of ​​tributes to the victims of the Westfield stabbing.
Bondi Junction will open its doors on Thursday to allow people to pay their respects to the victims.
The Queensland man, whose family said he lived with mental illness for decades, was shot dead by a police inspector on level five of the complex.
Six people remain in Sydney hospitals, and one woman is in intensive care in a serious but stable condition, NSW Health said on Wednesday.
A nine-month-old baby, whose mother was among the five women who died in the attack, is in hospital in serious but stable condition.
A permanent memorial is being planned near the site, and a candlelight vigil will also be held next to the beach on Sunday.
Ashlee Good, 38, advertising heiress Dawn Singleton, 25, architect Jade Young, 47, artist Pikria Darchia, 55, and security guard Faraz Tahir, 30, and Yixuan Cheng, 27, lost their lives during the attack.
Cauchi (pictured) stabbed six people to death at Westfield Bondi Junction shortly before 4pm on Saturday.