BBC America Introduces New TV Show About Real Life In The ER
You know me.
I’m all over anything that is from the BBC.
But this is different.
There is no TARDIS. And there are nurses along with the doctor. Lots of nurses.
And the only people flying through time and space are the trauma patients before they hit the bus or the ground.
24 Hours in the ER premiered last night on BBC America. I received a copy of the first two episodes from BBC America unedited for American television. Of course in Great Britian, this was called “24 Hours in A&E”.
On a personal level, I like it. It reminds me of the old “Trauma in the ER”.
On a professional level, it’s like being at work. Even the equipment is the same.
How is the nursing staff portrayed? It will be hard to say without seeing the U.S. edit, but in the first two episodes there are nurse practitioners anesthetizing lacerations, nurses working on trauma teams, taking the lead in Code Blues, advising physicians that their head injured patients aren’t retaining one word of the information they are painstakingly imparting (“Come back tomorrow!”) and doing post-mortem care (don’t see that on TV very often).
It’s realistic without being gory, touching without being sappy, and the nurses are there to save your ass and manage to treat you like a human being in the process.
And if every A&E in England is that freaking polite, I’m pulling up stakes and moving across the pond.
The link I’ve given above is to the “Meet the Staff” page. Take a look at it. I’d work with any one of them in a split second.
I’m hoping to score an interview with Nurse Jen.
They say the producers watched American television to see what our medical shows were like and that they saw we wanted character driven shows.
This is a character driven show, but this time the characters are real. Nurses. Doctors. Porters. Patients. ER techs. You. Me. Our next patient.
I laughed, got my adrenaline up for the trauma codes. And I cried.
But I cry at Doctor Who, so go figure….
I definitely recommend it.
Let me know what you think.
*This blog post was originally published at Emergiblog*
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