A doctor has described harrowing scenes in the emergency department of a Sydney hospital, including how victims had to be resuscitated repeatedly 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 completing an appendectomy at around 4pm on Saturday when chaos broke out.
“My phone, our surgical registrar’s phone, the anesthesiologist’s phone, our trauma alarm went off and I knew something really bad had happened,” Dr. Chambers said. the ABC’s 7.30.
St. Vincent’s was told to expect five patients, all critical, as the situation developed.
It was just one of six hospitals in Sydney to treat the 18 victims stabbed by the lone knifeman in the busy shopping centre, six of whom tragically died.
Dr. Anthony Chambers was the trauma surgeon on duty at St. Vincent’s Hospital on Saturday
Eighteen people were stabbed by a lone knifeman at Westfield Bondi Junction in an attack that left Sydney reeling (Picture: Paramedics on scene)
“By the time I got to the emergency department, we had already received our first patient,” Dr. Chambers said.
‘And so the team was actively resuscitating that patient and I immediately went to help.’
Part of his job as chief on-call surgeon is to assess patients, coordinate treatment, and deploy the hospital’s limited life-saving staff and equipment as needed – a task made even more difficult because he doesn’t know what injuries the following patients may have.
‘We methodically worked our way through the initial resuscitation of those patients, moving them to our CAT scanner to perform a full body scan to better assess the injuries, and (re)suscitating them’ , said Dr. Chambers.
One of the most urgent tasks in stabilizing patients, he said, is replacing 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 on patients, social worker Scarlett Sevastopoulos was among the staff helping frantic relatives who had rushed to the hospital.
St. Vincent’s was one of six hospitals admitting patients from Saturday’s attack
Scarlett Sevastopoulos told the ABC it was a privilege to help families as a social worker at the hospital
Many were unsure about their loved one’s injuries and didn’t even know if they were in the right hospital where their family member had been transferred.
Ms. Sevestopoulos said her main goal was to calm confused family members by taking them to a quieter part of the hospital and possibly letting them search their phones for information online that might be disturbing or inaccurate.
She described the work she does to help families cope with such heartbreaking events as a “privilege.”
Eight hours after the first patient arrived, the situation was sufficiently under control for staff to catch their breath 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 to be displayed in the centre.
At the reopening, it has been almost a week since six people were killed when 40-year-old Joel Cauchi carried out a stabbing attack.
Bondi Junction’s Oxford Street Mall has become a sea of tributes to honor the victims of the Westfield stabbing
Bondi Junction will open its doors on Thursday so people can pay their respects to the victims
The Queensland man, whose family reportedly lived with mental illness for decades, was shot dead by a police inspector on the fifth floor of the complex.
Six people remain in hospitals across Sydney, while one woman is in a serious but stable condition in intensive care, NSW Health said on Wednesday.
A nine-month-old baby, whose mother was one of five women killed in the attack, is in a serious but stable condition in hospital.
A permanent memorial is being planned near the site, and a candlelight vigil will also be held on 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, were killed in the attack.
Cauchi (pictured) stabbed six people to death at Westfield Bondi Junction shortly before 4pm on Saturday