Doctors at Perth Children's Hospital (PCH) are warning of a crisis after the emergency department was swamped with patients, leading to wait times of up to eight hours according to staff texts.
It comes amid an ongoing coronial inquest into the death of seven-year-old Aishwarya Aswath at the hospital's ED in April last year.
The inquest has been told there were not enough staff to handle demand on the night the girl died.
Text messages between doctors at PCH this week, seen by the ABC, paint a stark picture of continued strain in the emergency department.
"Perth Children's Hospital ED has more patients in it [than] any of the adult hospitals tonight," a doctor wrote, describing their experience earlier this week.
"The exec made an order for [the] workforce to start calling people to see if anyone would come in to help ... this is so messed up."
The state government says sick staff and a lack of GP access is lumping pressure on emergency departments.
But the doctors' calls for help were not because of gaps in the staffing roster, according to messages in a staff group chat.
Staff 1:
ED at crisis point tonight. If anyone can help out I'm sure it would be appreciated.
Staff 2:
It doesn't look like there's sick calls. All the night staff are on roster.
Last night was brutal....
Delays at PCH spiked earlier this week
The state government said an increase in respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) cases had resulted in high demand at PCH over the past week.
"Patients who need treatment urgently continue to be seen immediately," a spokesperson for health minister Amber-Jade Sanderson said.
But figures from the Department of Health show otherwise.
Delays at the PCH emergency department spiked on August 29 with a median triage wait time for urgent patients of 105 minutes.
That is more than triple the recommended maximum of 30 minutes.
The most urgent patient category — triage 1 — is used to describe patients with immediate life-threatening conditions.
Their median wait time on August 29 was eight minutes, despite requiring immediate intervention.
Messages in the PCH staff group chat described a shift where the emergency short stay unit (ESSU) was still at capacity by the time the next shift was set to take over.
Staff:
We had nearly 8 hour waits still at 5 [o'clock] this morning...
And by handover we had a full ESSU.
Common virus causing surge in demand
Child and Adolescent Health Service acting chief executive Valerie Jovanovic said they were experiencing the second highest peak in RSV cases in four years.
"Based on previous seasonal trends and current activity ... it is expected that RSV activity will continue to remain high and may continue to rise," she said.
The state government said Perth's hospitals were dealing with high demand being experienced across the country.
"We have put far more staff in and far more resources into the Perth Children's Hospital to deal with the demand," Premier Mark McGowan said.
Trouble trending
Since the beginning of this year, there has been a significant increase in the amount of time patients are forced to wait to be admitted after presenting at PCH.
Metropolitan hospitals aim to admit 90 per cent of patients within 30 minutes of arrival.
But monthly averages at PCH have not met that target since January.
Ambulance ramping has been even worse at other facilities.
Since March, less than half of ambulance attendances have been transferred within 30 minutes of arriving at metropolitan hospitals.
Patients that are transferred are also spending increasingly long periods in emergency departments.
A spokesperson for the health minister said pandemic protocols had taken up resources until only recently.
"[COVID] protocols at WA hospitals only began easing from August 15th," they said.
"These important infection control procedures, which were necessary during the height of the Omicron outbreak, slowed down emergency department processes."
