Hard-hitting BBC NI series will bring crisis in our hospitals into sharp focus
THE crisis facing Northern Ireland’s ailing health service is being brought into sharp focus next week in two no-holds-barred TV programmes that go behind the scenes in three Belfast hospitals.
The BBC NI series The Hospital: From The Inside shows just how hard it is to run a health service in Northern Ireland, where 280,000 people are waiting to see a consultant.
And the documentaries reveal that 95,000 of those patients have been waiting for an appointment for over a year.
One hospital co-ordinator tells the documentary makers that everyone in the NHS here feels the strains and pressures of trying to cope with “the worst waiting lists in the UK”.
The programmes, which air on successive nights on Tuesday and Wednesday, are being hailed by the BBC as opportunities for viewers to get “an unprecedented insight into the NHS in Northern Ireland through the eyes of the people who work in the hospitals and the patients who put their hope and faith in them”.
A BBC NI spokesman said: “The cameras get access to the patients, the staff and into the theatres where life-changing and life-saving operations are carried out.”
The programmes centre on the cases of a number of patients needing treatment for a range of health issues at the City Hospital, Musgrave Park and the Royal Victoria Hospital, including cancer, cardiac problems and hip replacements.
But even though the Belfast Health and Social Care Trust, with its six specialist hospitals and its workforce of more than 22,000 people, is one of the largest NHS Trusts in the UK, it faces increasing demands on its services.
Experts talk of how a growing and ageing population is bringing greater pressures than ever on the trust with “demand stretching its resources and capacity”.
And the documentaries highlight how easily those resources can be thrown into even more disarray by unexpected events like staff sickness or an emergency arrival that can have a knockon effect on planned procedures and on the patients waiting on those operations.
The two-part series made by DoubleBand Films features candid interviews with surgeons and trust co-ordinators and managers who have to juggle the demand for places and to schedule theatre time.
One co-ordinator says that beds are at 100% occupancy every day and the programmes reflect a clear frustration among medics and hospital staff about not being able to deliver the care they would like to give and the pressure of trying to meet government target times.
One medic says: “We do everything we can to reduce delays to make sure we get as many people treated here as possible but the demand is huge and that demand is continually growing.”
Others say they came into medicine to help people, yet their aspirations have been made harder to achieve because they’ve seen waiting lists growing “markedly”.
One consultant talks of the difficulty in having to tell patients there will be a wait before they get their surgery and to “see the pain etched on their face and see the suffering they are having”.
Among the patients who appear in the documentaries is teenager Megan Murdock, who needs major spinal surgery.
She was diagnosed with scoliosis, a disorder which causes an abnormal curve of the spine or backbone.
Jill Stirling, who has arthritis, talks about waiting for two years for a hip replacement. “If this doesn’t happen, I’m in a wheelchair. It’s scary.”
Lawrence Wilton, who’s been diagnosed with oesophageal cancer, is seen meeting a consultant who tells him he needs a “big operation” which he says is part of a “long and arduous journey”.
Lawrence tells the documentary makers: “There’s no point being frightened because it is what it is. And I’m willing to go through it. It saves your life. I’m only 60 so I want to live a while. So I want to beat this.”
Seamus Connolly is filmed as he meets a consultant to talk about surgery for a heart murmur that was detected during a medical in work.
He’s told that if doesn’t have the surgery, he will die.
And as he awaits his operation in hospital he says: “I’m glad I’m here. I’m glad it’s being done, finally. I just can’t wait to get out of here and get on with my life.”
Much of the first programme is focused on the cardiac unit at Belfast’s Royal Victoria Hospital
❝ I’m glad I’m here and it’s being done, finally. I just can’t wait to get out and get on with my life
which is the only one of its kind in Northern Ireland.
Waiting lists for cardiac surgery are growing too yet the experts caution that patients normally get sicker while they are waiting.
The programme makers hear that research has found that cardiac surgery is best carried out within 90 days of diagnosis but the NHS here isn’t meeting that target.
The documentaries follow a number of patients as they are readied for their surgeries, some of which are filmed and the cameras also focus on what happens after their operations.
During the series, the surgical teams also operate on a brain tumour and afterwards medics say that even though they can’t help as many people as quickly as they would like, they talk about the satisfaction they get when they meet patients who thank them for their work.
Director Jonathan Golden of DoubleBand Films says they set out to show viewers what managing a hospital is really like and to find out what it’s like to be a patient dependent on the quality of their treatment for their survival.
He adds: “These were the questions we set ourselves during our year of unique access to our major hospitals. I was astounded by the monumental scale of the challenge it is to run our hospitals. Time after time we filmed inspirational stories of patients, doctors, nurses and managers operating in extraordinary circumstances.”
The Hospital: From The Inside, will be broadcast on BBC One NI over two nights this Tuesday and Wednesday at 9pm