TV’S DR RANJ: Parents try to take photos of me with their youngsters – even when they are on life support
TV MEDIC Dr Ranj Singh has revealed how the parents of some of his young intensive care patients ask him to pose for photographs with their stricken offspring.
As well as appearing on ITV’s This Morning and the medical advice programme Dr Ranj: On Call, the 42-year-old works as a paediatric doctor in a London hospital.
Asked if fans ever request pictures while he is working for the NHS, he said: ‘Well, even worse than that, trying to take a photo of their child on a life support machine with me. That’s really not appropriate. I don’t think this is the right moment to be doing that sort of thing.
‘I work with kids and young people so usually they’re fairly honest about stuff like that. It’s their parents that sometimes get a little bit inappropriate.’
Dr Ranj, whose profile rose after he competed in the 2018 series of Strictly Come Dancing on the BBC, attributed the request to the stress of seeing their children battling ill-health in hospital.
‘I get it, you’re in that weird environment as a parent and all rules go out of the window,’ he told the Homo Sapiens podcast. ‘This is not your comfort zone. This is not the real world, so you latch on to any sort of normality you can.
‘But, if in that moment, I’m able to bring people a little bit of normality or, dare I say, positivity in some way, shape or form, then I’m more than happy to do that. I think those moments are really important, especially when you’re in crisis and you’re struggling and everything is overwhelming and it often is in the environment I work in.’
After training in London, Dr Ranj worked as a specialist in emergency medicine before becoming a member of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health in 2007. He married a pharmacist at a traditional Sikh ceremony in 2005, but divorced in 2011, two years after coming out as gay to his wife. He began his TV career a decade ago as a presenter on Get Well Soon, a children’s show that aired on CBeebies, and has been the resident doctor on This Morning since 2016.