In a corner of Parkland Hospital in Dallas, Texas, there's a simple bronze plaque. It reads: "Original Site Trauma 1 November 22 1963".

That beautiful economy of words and numbers is all that's needed because the name, Parkland, is inextricably linked with the events of that day.

Parkland is where former US president John F Kennedy drew his last breath.

The point of this is that hospitals, by their very nature, are often associated with great national tragedies.

We've seen that again just this last week, with the 20th anniversary of Princess Diana's death.

The frantic, failed efforts of Salpetriere hospital doctors to save the 'people's princess' are an integral part of that story.

For Dr Brendon Kearney, the Royal Adelaide Hospital's 'Parkland' moment came on October 12, 2002.

"One of my colleagues had a son who was on a football trip to Bali, and she rang me and said 'I can't contact my son. Is everything alright in Bali?'," Dr Kearney said.

Royal Adelaide responds to Bali bombing

Everything was not alright, and for so many Australian families, including Dr Kearney's colleague, nothing would ever be the same again.

Terrorists had bombed the popular nightclub district in Kuta, killing 202 people — 88 of them Australian.

Dr Kearney, who was the RAH's chief executive at the time, said the number of severely injured people, particularly those with burns, quickly overwhelmed Bali's hospitals.

The Australian Air Force was evacuating people to Darwin, but in 2002 the city's hospital lacked the specialist burns facilities needed.

"Within hours I'd sought permission from the Premier [Mike Rann] to send three jets to Darwin with intensive care and burns teams," Dr Kearney said.

"Many more people would have died ... people with burns need treatment quite urgently and we were able to provide that."

Different disasters demand different expertise.

A few years after Bali, the RAH, along with facilities around the world, helped pick up the pieces after the devastating Boxing Day tsunami.

It's believed close to 250,000 people lost their lives across the countries hit by the tsunami.

RAH instrumental in testing tsunami water

Dr Kearney said his hospital focused on Banda Aceh.

"We were asked to establish a hospital there — everything was gone, swept away by the tsunami," Dr Kearney said.

Archivist Jenny Scott shows former RAH chief executive Dr Brendon Kearney pictures of the old hospital. ( ABC News: Simon Royal )

"We loaded a 737 with staff and equipment.

"We had to be self-sustaining, so we took our own water and materials and there were literally hundreds of sick people, injured by the tsunami ... flying tin etc, severing legs and arms and so on.

"So we set up a hospital that rescued these people."

Crucially, to prevent further loss of life, the Adelaide staff had to set up a laboratory to test the water supplies.

"People were dying from the drinking water because it had been contaminated, so with the lab we were able to tell which wells were safe and which weren't," Dr Kearney said.

History of wars, plagues, epidemics

Closer to home, he recalled the 1995 Grand Prix — the last held in Adelaide.

McLaren team driver Mika Hakkinen was critically injured.

An off duty RAH doctor performed an emergency tracheotomy on him and Hakkinen was rushed to North Terrace.

"It saved his life when he would have died at most other circuits at that time," Dr Kearney said.

While a hospital may be defined by a single dramatic tragedy, it is the large-scale, long-term events that really test them — wars, plagues, epidemics.

At the State Library of South Australia, archivist Jenny Scott dug up four photo albums covering some of the great medical and health trials faced by the RAH.

As she showed them to Dr Kearney, the former RAH chief exclaimed.

"Oh my goodness, would you look at these ... they are treasures," he said.

The albums cover the 1880s, 1918, 1946 and 1985.

Dr Kearney explained what the hospital was facing at each of these points in the state's history.

"In the 1880s you had this great challenge of infectious diseases," he said.

"The mortality rates were huge because there were no antibiotics to counter them.

An operating theatre in 1946 at the Royal Adelaide Hospital. ( State Library of SA: B26134_6 )

"If we move then to 1918, well that was the time of the Spanish influenza epidemic, and that was a massive world-wide epidemic and South Australia was not exempted from that.

"World War II was an interesting period.

"A lot of RAH staff went to the war and came back with surgical techniques that really improved outcomes.

"And then to 1985 and the onset of AIDS.

"We worked very closely with Professor Robert Gallo [who helped discover the HIV virus] and we were one of the first hospitals in this nation and the world to be able to test for AIDS and then be able to develop management programs."

Cutting-edge technology at the Royal Adelaide Hospital in 1985. ( State Library of SA: B46395_282 )

Dr Kearney said until the Queen Elizabeth Hospital was built in the 1950s, the RAH was South Australia's only major adult hospital.

It has seen us through the vagaries of nature, and the occasional cruelties of our own.

The doctor believed the new RAH at the other end of North Terrace will do the same because it has a great foundation.

"The old RAH had its problems on occasions, but it was also recognised as one of Australia's finest hospitals," he said.

"It's a good basis for what comes next."