Medical tent at Defqon1 music festival ran out of supplies and crowds refused to let ambulances through, inquest hears
A senior doctor overseeing the medical tent at Defqon1 has told an inquest that the music festival was a “turning point” and in hindsight he was not “adequately” prepared for the number of patients who presented to his team.
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The most senior doctor working at Defqon. 1 festival where two teenagers went into cardiac arrest from MDMA overdoses only stocked two paralysing drugs needed for emergency resuscitation at the 30,000-strong crowd event, a court heard today.
Emergency registrar Sean Wing said that Defqon. 1 “was a turning point” for drug deaths at festivals, telling an inquest that in hindsight he was not “adequately” prepared to treat the anticipated 30 patients with the temporary paralysing drug at the 2018 event.
Diana Nguyen, 21, and Joseph Pham, 23, both went into cardiac arrest within six minutes of arriving separately into the tent.
The medical tent was “chaos,” he told the inquest, which is investigating six deaths at music festivals, with two doctors overseeing 394 clinical presentations and six ambulance transports to hospital at the September 2018 event.
“I calculated 30 patients, we had enough medicines for common emergency patients, my team expected to see 30 patrons with agitated behaviour, or elevated behaviour, requiring sedation,” Doctor Wing, 31, told the court.
“A number of patients required Intensive Care, I accept there is an element of good fortune given the number of patients we saw.
“Defqon was a turning point in the pattern of presentations I had seen.
“To incubate two patients at an event is rare.”
Asked by counsel assisting the coroner, Peggy Dwyer, if he was adequately prepared to treat 30 patients with a paralysing drug, he replied, “no” adding medical supplies he had personally sourced and stocked were “comprehensive” to treat two.
“I had brought the necessary drugs for 30,000 patrons, as a medical practitioner I can lawfully possess medication and place an order and store them in a secure environment,” he told the court.
“I thought two doses of a paralysing agent was adequate for a situation I thought was extremely rare — one dose of Rocuronium and one dose of Suxamethonium (both used to stabilise critical patients to allow insertion of a breathing tube)”.
Asked by Doctor Dwyer if he understood paralysing Diana with Suxamethonium may worsen hyperkalemia (organ meltdown), he said: “It’s not the ideal drug but can be used to treat hyperkalemia.
“I took a calculated risk, I accept, for Diana, Rocuronium was set aside for Joseph.
“Of the two I thought she was likely to be at lower risk with Suxomethomium,” he said.
Doctor Wing, contracted to private medical firm Event Medical Services (EMS), admitted there was not a comprehensive inventory of medicines stocked for the tent.
He told the court he left the tent to accompany Diana by ambulance to Napean Hospital, where she later died, leaving second emergency department doctor, Andrew Beshara, who was attending to Joseph Pham and had never independently managed an airway to resuscitate patients.
“I didn’t speak to Doctor Beshara about drugs needed, we bought a comprehensive drug pack to meet requirement in terms of the whole event,” he said.
“I assumed Doctor Beshara was an experienced emergency doctor.
“I took that to mean he had some independence in his decision making and medical skills.
“With hindsight two doctors would have been enough if they had significant experienced and supported but I think it was in the realm of acceptable,” he said.
The inquest continues.
Originally published as Medical tent at Defqon1 music festival ran out of supplies and crowds refused to let ambulances through, inquest hears
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