We have had three days of the Aishwarya Inquest to this point. The parent's contention from the start was that there were issues of staffing that needed to have been addressed and had not been. The Premier on the other hand was adamant that staffing was not an issue.
I said on radio that when you take a child into a hospital there are three elements of the relationship that then is established. These are 1) the parents and family, 2) The Equipment and 3) The staff. This is a new hospital, You would therefore assume the equipment would be ok. And if the Premier is saying that staffing was not an issue then he must be blaming the parents for what transpired. Our view was that that was complete rubbish.
Now lets look at the evidence to date: I hope this gives you a good summation of events to this point. It certainly looks much like staffing was a serious issue. Until that has been addressed then I can not have confidence in the one Children's hospital in this town. As I said to Roger Cook in his office "You have a management in place that took a World class hospital in PMH to a third world hospital at PCH. Now you are giving that same management $300 million more to squander?"
Dr Aresh Anwar:
Staffing was a problem – borders were closed and we could not recruit staff to the positions. We had to do away with parts of staff training so as to be able to cover shifts
From ABC: Nurse Jacqueline Taylor had earlier given Aishwarya a triage score of four, the second-least serious category. Her assessment of Aishwarya was carried out entirely through a screen.
Ms Taylor told the inquest she had been running the triage desk alone with 96 patients presenting during the afternoon shift. While hands-on assessments were preferable, they were not possible due to time constraints. Ms Taylor believed Aishwarya, who she recorded as having diarrhoea, vomiting and a headache, likely had gastro. She said she didn't know the girl had a fever. Ms Taylor maintained the triage score was appropriate but acknowledged Aishwarya's care could have been escalated earlier with a more thorough assessment.
She said staff had been stressed and demoralised around the time of the incident
"The whole department was under pressure, time pressure and exhaustion," she said.
Dr Teo:
From WA Today: Dr Teo inspected Aishwarya and identified discolourations on her right iris after a clerk had relayed concerns from Ms Sasidharan about the girl's eyes.
Giving evidence on Thursday, Dr Teo confirmed he did not have access to the triage notes and was not aware Aishwarya had any other symptoms.
He told colleagues Aishwarya would need a further eye assessment but did not make any notes.
A nurse soon after recorded Aishwarya had an elevated heart rate and temperature of 38.8C, above the threshold for considering sepsis protocols.
Dr Teo said the hospital had been short staffed and his focus was to deal with Aishwarya efficiently.
Deputy state coroner Sarah Linton asked whether he might have had a better picture if he had "slowed down a little bit and actually spoken to the parents".
"In hindsight, yes I would have," Dr Teo replied, adding that he regretted not investigating further.
‘I tried my best’ – Nurse Vining
From ABC: Ms Vining was also annoyed at why she didn’t refer to a more senior nurse when Aishwarya recorded a temperature of over 38.5 degrees Celsius, which according to guidelines meant she should have considered sepsis.
She said high temperatures were common.
“We were understaffed, there was no one to escalate to, there was no senior staff. I did the best I could with what I had,” said Ms. Vining.
She said she did not have access to policy documents related to an observation tool called the PARROT card (Paediatric Acute Recognition and Response Observation Tool).
She said she scored the parents’ concerns on this card as ‘zero’ because she thought she had allayed Aishwarya’s parents’ concerns.
At one point in her testimony, she broke down in tears saying that she was overwhelmed by what had happened and how sorry she was for Aishwarya’s family.
Parents don't blame staff
Family spokesman Suresh Rajan said outside court that the parents did not blame individual staff working that night.
"When you look at all the evidence … it is absolutely certain that there are staffing issues at play," Mr Rajan said.
"The parents have been very clear from the start, it is not an issue of scapegoating anyone, it is absolutely the system that needs to be addressed," he said.
"We want to make sure that what we find in the systemic failures that happened they should have been addressed by now."