The documentary was filmed over five weeks to the start of March
(Picture: BBC/Label1/Ryan McNamara)The scale of the challenge facing the NHS in recovering from the pandemic while reducing a waiting list of more than six million patients is laid bare by a TV documentary.
A new episode of the acclaimed BBC2 series Hospital returns to the Royal Free, in Hampstead, to find burned out staff quitting and doctors admitting the NHS is delivering “beyond a bad service”.
But the Royal Free’s chief executive said it also showed the determination of staff to work “even harder” than during Covid to give the best care possible.
This included saving the life of a mother who was transferred to the hospital’s world-renowned infectious diseases unit after contracting Lassa fever, a viral haemorrhagic fever from West Africa that killed her newborn son.
The documentary, which was filmed over five weeks to the start of March, shows paramedics unable to offload patients from ambulances because the emergency department is so busy. One waiting patient suffers a seizure.
Jonathan Costello, an emergency department consultant who is shown quitting the NHS, says: “I think there is a real sense of fatigue. People are tired. Colleagues have left. I think there was a system burnout. There is a relative exodus of staff.”
Consultant radiologist Jo Brookes says doctors are “fighting for space” to treat patients. Referring to the thousands waiting up to two years for treatment across the NHS, he says the situation is “hopeless” and adds: “That is beyond a bad service.”
At one point, the hospital’s alert level is raised to four, the highest rating, meaning there is an increased potential for patient care and safety to be compromised. Rachel Anticoni, chief operating officer, tells colleagues: “We are really under the cosh today. All hands on deck, please.”
The documentary shows one patient, a scrub nurse, undergoing a whipple procedure – complex high-risk surgery to remove the gall bladder, part of the pancreas and small intestine after she was diagnosed with a rare cancer.
Leye Ajayi, a consultant urological surgeon involved in the surgery, says: “I really believe we are just scratching the surface. We are going to find out over the next few years the real impact of Covid.”
Jackie Waldock, the programme’s executive producer, told the Standard: “The staff are pretty incredible. They have just been through two years of covid. They have given their all. They’re exhausted.
“They are now being asked by the Government to step up and deliver 30 per cent more productivity than they did before the pandemic. It’s a huge ask – and that six million on the waiting list is looking like it is growing.”
The Lassa fever patient and her husband are seen on camera for the first time. It is thought he contracted the fever while on a business trip to West Africa. He unknowingly passed it to his wife when she was 36 weeks pregnant.
Ms Waldock said: “Both she and her husband were very keen to be involved because they felt it was a way of saying thank you to the NHS for saving her life.”
The Royal Free NHS trust saw its waiting list jump from 75,000 pre-pandemic to more than 100,000, though the total has since come back below six figures. About 20 per cent of the waits are for surgery, with the others for consultant appointments or scans.
Trust chief executive Caroline Clarke told the Standard: “It’s less apparent to the public that staff are working just as hard as they were then [at the start of the pandemic] – sometimes harder, because we’re trying to clear the backlog.
“It’s true to say that people are really tired, and I think you see that on the programme. But I hope you also see that people are up for the next stage. We are working seven days a week where we can. We are working long days. It’s throughout the NHS, not just at the Royal Free.”
Ms Clarke added: “We have got 10,000 staff and most of them, are still here. But we have lost people because they are tired, and we have to face up to that. But it’s still a brilliant career.
“In most areas now, we are doing more than we were doing in 2019/20. In pretty much every area, it feels busier than it did before Covid.
“I want Londoners to know that our staff are working harder than ever, that they really care and that we haven’t forgotten you.”
Hospital: Road to Recovery is on BBC Two on Thursday at 9pm.
