Geordie Hospital star Sean Marshall-Kellie said filming the new Channel 4 show has been "a bit of fun" after the difficult two years faced by the NHS during the Covid-19 pandemic - but added it had felt "really important" to highlight some of the "less sexy" sides of healthcare.
The new show - which premiered on Monday night - focuses on the day-to-day work of some of the NHS heroes at the Freeman and the RVI hospitals. Producers took a conscious decision to highlight the stellar efforts of our region's healthcare workers without things all being about Covid-19.
Sean - a clinical nurse specialist in stone disease who works in the urology department - told ChronicleLive how he felt the TV show team had decided to feature him "possibly because I didn't seem that bothered initially", but said he hoped it highlighted how fulfilling his job could be.
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Sean set up a specialist service for the Newcastle Hospitals NHS Trust around four years ago - his role was the first of its kind in the region and one of the first across the UK.
He carries out a range of procedures to help treat patients with kidney stones - including, as demonstrated on Channel 4, removing stents.
A stent, which is used to ensure kidney and bladder function continues after stones are dealt with, can cause serious pain, and on screen Sean carries out a quick procedure to remove them.
"People often find stents incredibly painful," he said. "They walk in a shell of themselves and I'm able to do a procedure and literally relieve them in minutes. It's really fulfilling. You get to do this and see someone walk out so much better."
As for his TV experience more generally, the Ouseburn resident, 32, added: "It was unusual, definitely. When you're walking around the hospital corridors with one camera in front of you another behind you - but it was a really fun experience.
"Given we had had - at the time we filmed - such a rubbish 12 to 18 months, so it was nice to be able to have a little bit of fun. Though obviously there were still restrictions in place. And it was nice that the show doesn't put the focus on Covid - that was refreshing."
Sean explained a bit about his job.
"My background was more in major trauma and critical care medicine. I decided to leave that - to be honest I'd been there since I was about 23 and it felt a depressing way to spend my youth.
"This clinical specialist role came up and it was a brand new job at that point - there were very few of us in the country. It was an exciting opportunity to completely set the service up. and make it exactly what I wanted it to be.
"When I applied I didn't have much urology experience but I did have excellent management skills and leadership experience - and knew how to improve services."
The senior nurse was, like many others, redeployed to help fight Covid-19 during the first lockdown - but Sean said, as he had such experience of intensive care and trauma that his had been "absolutely fine".
That said, he added that it had been vital to keep services like his going as much as possible through the subsequent stages of the pandemic - because so many people were waiting for vital treatment.
Geordie Hospital airs on Channel 4 on Mondays from 8pm. The whole series is available on All4.
