I was an A&E nurse at the time this show came out and it's the most realistic hospital based drama until This Is Going To Hurt. However, with both being doctor-centric, the latter heavily downplayed the role of the midwife, whilst Cardiac Arrest was pretty cruel and wide of the mark in its portrayal of nursing staff. The doctors did carry out a lot of roles that nurses perform nowadays, but the nursing staff were not the work shy, nagging bimbos that the show tends to portray them as, particularly not in any A&E department I worked in..
That aside, what the show captures, that other medical dramas miss, is that it is a workplace full of friendships, relationships and teamwork, just as an office or a factory is a workplace, so there's room for humour in amongst the drama. We had to have a sense of humour, otherwise we'd never have got through half the stuff we had to get through.
I just finished rewatching the whole series today, and it was quite nostalgic for me, with it being from my time as a nurse, so I recognised all the equipment, the working practice, the terminology, etc, that a lot of young nurses today might be puzzled by, as things have moved on so much over the past 30 years. I particularly enjoyed A&E being referred to as casualty or cas, as it really irks me when I hear it called ER nowadays. And I don't think there was one character in the whole series that didn't remind me of at least one person I worked with, save the hospital administrators, who were portrayed a bit like the gestapo, suspending someone every other episode and actively looking for reasons to suspend them. Yes, in real life the admin team were probably the least loved people in the hospital, apart from the dreaded Infection Control Nurse, but they weren't pure evil, like the ones in the show.
But it's a fab series, albeit the last episode got a bit daft, and it's a shame more series weren't made, as the central characters were all very watchable. And how could you not fall in love with Helen. Baxendale?
