Anh’s Brush With Fame: Prof Gordian Fulde opens up about career

For decades, Gordian Fulde saw it all in one of Australia’s busiest emergency departments — but there’s one patient that still haunts him to this day.

As one of the country’s top medical minds he has seen it all in one of Australia’s busiest emergency departments — but there’s one patient that still haunts him to this day.

Professor Gordian Fulde was emergency department director at Sydney’s St Vincent Hospital for more than 30 years before retiring last year.

Appearing on this week’s episode of Anh’s Brush With Fame, Prof Fulde told Anh Do the hardest moments during his decades-long career had been dealing with people critically injured but still lucid.

“It’s the patient who is still conscious, relating to you as a human being, who then dies in front of your eyes in spite of everything you can do for them,” he said.

“And I remember this girl who was hit by a car crying for her mother, as a child would do. And I can absolutely replay it in my head anytime … that was sad.

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Professor Gordian Fulde spoke candidly about his career on Anh's Brush With Fame.

“In some ways, you could say I haven’t got over her yet, because it’s the last thing you want. A nice girl. Yeah, it’s just horrible.”

Prof Fulde later broke down in tears as he recalled to Do the one life he desperately wanted to save but couldn’t when he was just a trainee doctor in 1978.

“My dad — very strict routine, and he used to go swimming Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and he was in the pool and we knew he had an aortic aneurysm,” he told Do.

“That’s the big vessel in the body which expands and then eventually will burst. And it burst. and only he and I were there. I fished him out of the pool.”

Ambulance officers soon arrived on the scene and asked Prof Fulde what his father’s wishes were about dying, leaving him to make a heartbreaking decision.

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Prof Fulde was head of one of Australia’s busiest emergency departments for more than three decades.

“They had the injection with adrenaline to put into the heart, and they asked me, ‘Do you want us to do this?’ And having talked with Dad, and I remember so clearly saying, ‘No.’ And then I had to go and say it to my mother — ‘Dad’s dead,” Prof Fulde said.

“That was tough because she’d seen us drive off. I’d gone home and I’d picked up Dad as a routine, and Mum never got over it.”

During his time at St Vincent’s Prof Fulde became a prominent campaigner for lockout laws in nearby King’s Cross following Thomas Kelly’s death from a coward punch in 2012.

Younger brother Stuart later took his own life in 2016, with Prof Fulde telling Do he is saddened by the backlash the Kelly family has faced.

“I really despair at what they have gone through and still go through, and all they’re trying to do now ... the kickback and nastiness that the Kellys still experience, when they’re not trying to do anything but to help it not happen again, is mind-blowing,” he said.

Anh’s Brush With Fame airs Tuesday 8pm on ABC TV and on iview

If you or someone you know needs help, please contact Lifeline on 13 11 14 or visit lifeline.org.au. In an emergency, call triple-0