No matter how many years have elapsed they are able to name the staff who cared for their children.

“Thank you PMH. I love you. I hate you. I’m glad you’re going but I’ll be sad to see your doors close and your bricks come down. It’s a weird mix of messed-up sentimental emotions. Thank you to all the staff that cared for our boys and all the wonderful people that we met along the way,” one parent wrote.

“Bricks and mortar, but so much more,” one nurse has written on a wall.

Another former PMH nurse told WAtoday  the strength of emotion the closure triggered took everyone by surprise.

“I needed to express my connection with this hospital and those people,” she said. “It’s not the building, but the experiences that happened there.”

She said it was impossible not to be changed by watching families and children go through trauma and tragedy.

“It’s life stripped bare. Everyone is so vulnerable,” she said. “They stop working, they live in the hospital. They sit next to their babies for days without a break. Some mums, I had to make them go outside just for a ten-minute walk to get the sun on their face. I’ve seen huge resilience in families, so many parents with incredible strength; so many little faces, so many inspiring children.”

She said the nature of nursing work, the long nights on the wards and the quiet Sunday afternoons, meant nurses shared the quietest of family moments.

“Walking out of that ICU after resuscitating a baby, into the traffic and the daylight and people rushing to work, is indescribable,” she said.

“Staff have to develop ways of coping, and they see each other all the time, so it becomes a real family.”

She said while these experiences were shared by hospital staff all over the world, the style of nursing at PMH was unique in Perth.

“The whole focus of the nursing there was to minimise trauma,” she said. “We kept family units together. There was no making people wait outside. You nursed not only the person in the bed, but everyone around the bed. You leant over the mother in bed with the child, the father sleeping on the floor. We did anything we could prevent children having to be taken from their parents, even having them in there during resuscitations. We were all so focused on the right thing to do, and it meant so many difficult decisions, so many grey areas.”

Nurses had gone to enormous lengths to bring smiles to small faces, whether through holding birthday parties for a child who spent the first three years of their life in hospital, to taking a child on a ventilator on a walk into Subiaco to see the pet shop.

“It was an epic little walk down the street; you needed two ventilator trained nurses, sunglasses because their eyes hadn’t seen the sun in so long, blankets, so much equipment in case they got cold or hot or anything went wrong,” she said.

“You all understand that things can change in a moment.

“There is so much that went unspoken, and all those memories are coming through right now for those staff and those parents.”

Health Minister Roger Cook said the $1.2 billion PCH, one of the largest health projects ever undertaken in WA, would mean PMH staff could continue to provide outstanding health care. “PMH has served this community so well for more than 108 years and will leave a lasting legacy,” he said.

Every patient being transferred on Monday morning is being tracked with special software in the operation planned by Main Roads WA, the WA Police and Department of Health’s Disaster Preparedness Management Unit.

Intensive care and high dependency patients are being transported with a medical team, registered nurse and any critical care transport requirements. Specially equipped neonatal ambulances and support teams will transport young babies requiring a high level of care.

Patients from Bentley Adolescent Unit will mark the final patient move, and are due to arrive at PCH within a week.