Young woman's arm amputated at railway collapse site to save her: Emergency Center manager's distressing words

Photo collage: Serbian MUP, Facebook/A.R.

Surgeon Dr. Dragan Nikolic, manager of the Emergency Center of the Clinical Center of Vojvodina, revealed how the rescue operation went at the site of the Novi Sad Railway Station accident.

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Despite the severity of the injuries, he hopes that those who survived will get better and notes that it is very important that along with the professionalism and skill of all the medical staff, there must also be empathy for both the patients and their loved ones.

Dr. Nikolic said that a multidisciplinary team is taking care of the recovery of the three patients who were pulled alive from the ruins at the Novi Sad Railway Station, which partially collapsed on Friday, killing 14 people.

However, the doctor stressed that the survivors' are still in danger.

"The multidisciplinary team is constantly present. Unfortunately, I wish the patients were doing better, but their lives are in danger. The treatment is intensive, we monitor them, we invest every possible effort and hope for a good outcome," says Dr. Dragan Nikolic.

He points out that in terms of organization, when the accident happened in Novi Sad, everything was exceptional.

"We had highly timely information about what was happening on the ground. At one point, a river of people from KC (Clinical Center) Vojvodina came to the Emergency Center. We didn't have to say anything, I knew I had a huge number of people at my disposal. We knew what was happening at every moment. These three young people are alive thanks to good organization," says Nikolic.

Such injuries have not been seen since the war, the doctor stressed.

"We are always ready for the worst scenario, to apply all our knowledge to save people. We received information that the people on the ground had reached a young woman, that there was a heavy weight trapping her arm, and I immediately made the decision to perform an amputation on the spot in order to save her. I had with me an excellent team of a large number of people who were ready to go without question, whether their own lives might be in danger or not. They asked me how we were going to amputate the arm, I said any way, even under local anesthesia. The people on the ground managed to free her and we immediately rushed to the operating room with the girl," says Dr. Nikolic.

He notes that doctors always expect the worst, but that he sincerely hopes that with such a good team, these rescued people will recover.

"We only realized what had really happened (the next) morning. The hardest thing is when we get a report that something is not going right (with the patients). We all have a huge desire for things to turn out well. The most important thing is to invest the knowledge we have been saving up for things like this. For us, it is a big challenge to save these people. They might not survive, according to prognoses, but with this kind of effort, I hope for a good outcome regardless," says Dr. Nikolic.

He said that in addition to medical skills, humane approach is also very important in these moments, which the doctors are displaying.

"The parents of one of the patients are not leaving the Emergency Center. A nurse called me to tell me that the father of one of the patients has not left her side for 24 hours, I asked her if a meal was prepared for him, she told me that it was and that he refuses to eat. We all came down to talk to him, to offer him that, to share in his suffering. We need that! We need empathy. On the one hand there is professionalism, on the other there is the humane approach. It must be joined, in fact. And we all have to empathize, we all have to participate in that. If that's the case, then it will be easier for those people and it will be easier for all of us," Dr. Nikolic told RTS.

(Telegraf.rs/RTS)