Do you have a recurring stress dream? Of the Americans who suffer from nightmares – America is, I suspect, the only country that would commission this polling – 39 per cent of them are afflicted by terrors about work. Being late, being unprepared, making a mistake: we all know these anxieties, not to mention the sense of relief when you wake up and discover you haven’t made the error, haven’t left a glaring typo in your reveiw. But what if something terrible did happen? This is the fear that Malpractice, the ITV drama about healthcare professionals under extreme pressure, plays upon as it returns for its second season.
Tom Hughes is Dr James Ford, a brooding psychiatrist with designer stubble, working on an overstretched unit. “You have no idea what this department is up against,” his boss, Kate (Zoe Telford), warns. But the fortunes of both Dr Ford and his beleaguered colleagues take a further dive over the course of a day. As the on-call registrar, Ford is sent to attend a postpartum consultation with a mother, Rosie (Hannah McClean), who is struggling. At the same time, he’s supposed to be attending a sectioning under the Mental Health Act. Tugged in two directions, he fails to offer either patient sufficient support, incurring disastrous consequences and the wrath of obstetrician Dr Sophia Hernandez (Selin Hizli). With one of his charges dead via an apparently needless set of circumstances, is Dr Ford to blame? Or was there a more complex chain of events that led to the tragedy?
