Hospital Series 5

Episode
Episode 1
Broadcast Info
2020 (59 mins)
Description
Filmed this winter, as A&E waiting times hit their highest ever recorded levels and the impact of exceptional demand is placing the NHS under severe pressure, Hospital is the story of the health service in unprecedented times. Now in its fifth series, the award-winning Hospital, returns to Merseyside to chart the day-to-day life of seven NHS Trusts across the entire city of Liverpool. The hospitals have a catchment area covering more than two and half million people, stretching beyond the city to North Wales, Cheshire and to the Isle of Man. Edited and broadcast within weeks of filming, this eight-part series for BBC TWO captures the daily realities facing the NHS right now. Hospital brings audiences close to the issues and challenges that continually dominate the headlines. The new Royal, the City’s brand new state-of-the-art Hospital, remains unfinished and unopen three years after it was due to open. The collapse of the building contractor Carillion at the beginning of 2018 left the new Royal Liverpool University Hospital in need of extensive repairs. With the subsequent discovery of serious structural problems and unsafe external cladding, the building is not due to open until 2022; five years late and now costing more than £1bn to repair and build. With the new Hospital unusable, an ambitious merger, three years in the planning, of Liverpool’s two biggest hospital Trusts - The Royal Liverpool & Aintree - starts. Despite the new hospital not being ready, they forge ahead as the creation of a billion-pound NHS Trust aims to improve patient care by removing duplication of services and save millions for the NHS. With both the current Royal & Aintree hospitals at capacity, A&E overflowing and emergencies arriving that need life-saving surgery, this film follows the patients as they’re caught up in an extraordinary move of hospital specialisms. A complicated jigsaw ensues as hundreds of patients, staff and a £1.6 million state-of-the-art robot are transported across the City, wards are completely re-organised and in an unprecedented move, all the Royal’s operating theatres bar one are closed. In an extraordinary step the 40-year-old Royal Liverpool University Hospital closes eleven of its twelve operating theatres for 24 hours, to allow for a reorganisation of specialist services. Just one theatre is kept open for a pre-planned list of urgent operations, when a patient with just a 50/50 chance of survival arrives in A&E needing life-saving surgery to repair a burst aortic aneurism. 74-year-old David is prepped for a life or death operation Tommy has aggressive prostate cancer and needs surgery with the Da Vinci robot if he is to survive. A pioneering surgeon who has revolutionised Urological cancer care in Liverpool was due to move his £1.6 million robot into the brand-new hospital; instead he’s forced to take up residence in the old Royal building, with all its accompanying challenges, where he worries the Da Vinci may not fit into the operating theatre. Across the City, Aintree hospital prepares to accept all Orthopaedic Trauma patients from across Liverpool. This will double their hip fracture workload alone to over 800 each year. But their new Orthopaedic ward is already full to bursting on the first morning, as overnight, increased demand through A&E has meant bed space is at a premium. Orthopaedic surgeons are frustrated as the service they’ve spent three years planning is struggling to get off the ground. Meanwhile, 91-year-old Ron, an avid motor cycle enthusiast who slipped and fell has mistakenly been brought to the wrong hospital. Ron needs immediate life-saving surgery, without which he may not survive. He must be transported across the city - his second ambulance trip of the day. And in critical care at The Royal, Blessing, a 27-year-old mum of two young boys is seriously ill with Lupus, an incurable auto-immune disease. She has developed sepsis, a serious infection in her knee, which could kill her but she’s too ill to follow the move to Aintree for an orthopaedic operation and the equipment the clinicians need for her operation has already been moved. Shown from multiple perspectives, audiences witness the complexities of the dilemmas and decision-making, which happen every day for consultants, surgeons and managers and the impact these decisions have on patients. Against the backdrop of historic demands stemming from limited resources, increasing patient numbers and social care at full stretch, the series will show the extraordinary work of some of Liverpool’s 20,000 NHS hospital staff as they push the boundaries of what is possible with world class, cutting edge treatments and life-saving operations.
Genre
Medicine; Business Studies; Science; Biology; Health and Social Care

How to cite this record

The Open University, "Hospital Series 5". https://learningonscreen.ac.uk/ou/search/index.php/prog/236477 (Accessed 09 Jan 2025)