In ITV’s Malpractice, (the title is a bit of a giveaway), a dedicated but stressed-out emergency doctor, Lucy Edwards (Niamh Algar), finds herself accused of negligence following the death of a young drug overdose victim, Edith Owusu. Edith’s treatment is temporarily sidelined when a blood-spattered kid and an armed man bust into A&E, and Lucy has to make split-second decisions about priorities. There’s not enough beds, and, as the duty nurse asks her, who’s she going to give the space to – the child bleeding to death, or the “junkie”, now stabilised? In this fast-cut busy opening sequence, Lucy delegates the routine task of looking after the overdosed girl to a fairly incompetent but devious junior (Priyanka Patel as Dr Ramya Morgan). We see that it is she, not Lucy, who gets mixed up about Edith’s dosages, with lethal results; but Dr Morgan is a more plausible witness than the troubled Lucy, who gets the blame dumped on her.
When Edith’s influential father demands an investigation by the NHS Trust, Lucy has no choice but to cooperate. But she starts to behave increasingly shiftily, covering things up, and generally living in fear of the pseudo-cops of the hospital Medical Investigation Unit – an unlikeable pair played with controlled bureaucratic menace by Helen Behan (as Dr Norma Callahan), and Jordan Kouame (as Lucy’s former colleague, Dr George Adjei).
