Critical: Inside Intensive Care

Documentary series following staff providing critical and life-saving care at the Royal Gwent Hospital in Newport, South Wales. Filmed in the summer of 2019, before the coronavirus outbreak gripped the world, this series offers an extraordinary insight into the working lives of those who are now on the frontline of fighting the deadly virus. Every day the staff in the intensive care unit treat patients whose lives hang in the balance, but not all of those treated on the unit will survive. In this episode the team treat several patients whose hearts have stopped. Patients who suffer a cardiac arrest often end up in a critical condition and their outcomes can be uncertain. The damage caused by the heart failing can be severe, including catastrophic injury to the brain. Those admitted to the intensive care unit are the sickest in the hospital and their stay on the ICU can range from a few hours to several months. More unusual is having to treat an expectant mother - now the staff have not one, but two lives to try to save.

Filmed in the summer of 2019 before coronavirus struck, Critical: Inside Intensive Care is a powerful and moving observational documentary series following the staff on the Intensive Care Unit at the Royal Gwent Hospital in Newport, south Wales. These staff are now on the frontline fighting the virus, but in this series we see the extraordinary work that they were doing before the present crisis. On this ward, life hangs in the balance. Staff treat a wide variety of patients with a range of illnesses. In this episode we some whose symptoms are linked to their lifestyle but others prove more difficult to diagnose. One man’s strange symptoms are a medical mystery leaving the doctors scratching their heads. Sometimes despite all the medical and mechanical organ support that ICU can offer, there is little staff can to do help those in the most desperate circumstances. The Royal Gwent Hospital serves a diverse area, from the city streets of Newport to the rural valleys of south Wales. Unemployment and social deprivation are high here and this can be reflected in the patients treated on the ICU. Caring for those suffering with the effects of alcoholism and drug abuse is common, while the staff also encounter an increasing number of homeless patients.

Filmed in the summer of 2019 before coronavirus struck, Critical: Inside Intensive Care is a powerful and moving observational documentary series following the staff on the Intensive Care Unit at the Royal Gwent Hospital in Newport, south Wales. These staff are now on the frontline fighting the virus, but in this series we see the extraordinary work that they were doing before the present crisis. On this ward, life hangs in the balance. Our society is ageing and the staff on the ICU treat a high number of elderly patients, but the older and more frail a person is, the harder it is to overcome a critical illness.