00:01Today we heard from Paula Hyland, she's an executive with the Tasmania Health Service
00:06and she detailed the efforts that staff went through to try and save children on that day.
00:14Now, Ekoe Brown was called quite early on, that's nationally used when there is a mass casualty event.
00:21We heard that the children arrived at the Mersey Community Hospital from about 10am
00:27and that unfortunately two of them were declared deceased upon arrival.
00:35We heard that identification became difficult among the flurry and the chaos of trying to save these children.
00:45A number of staff were called in to try and assist.
00:50But we did hear that one mother whose son had died upon arrival didn't find out until about four hours
00:57later.
00:58And then Ms Hyland said that the priority was on saving children and performing the best care that they could
01:06and that communication with families, that wasn't the immediate priority as this was all unfolding.
01:14They have since changed their protocols to make it easier where a patient hasn't yet been identified,
01:25to be able to follow them through the hospital and to be able to provide more real-time digital information.
01:32A teacher from the school did come during that morning to help them work out who was who,
01:40because of course at that point they were patients and they were just working to help them.
01:46Now, she also spoke about the ongoing pain of staff.
01:52The Mersey Community Hospital and Ms Hyland said it's a really tightly knit community
01:57and a lot of the medical staff that day would have either known the children or have known relatives.
02:05She said even people that weren't there working on that day continue to be affected.
02:11No, no.
02:11Everybody, I think I'm talking about the doctor, so this is more about her.
02:12She said no.
02:12No, I'm not talking about her.
02:12She said no to her goal and she said no.
02:13She said no, she said no.
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