24 Hours in A&E

80-year-old Rose has fluid on her lungs and is having trouble breathing. Her three daughters Christine, Sandra and Debbie put on a brave face around their mother’s bedside, convincing her that everything will be all right, but in the relatives’ room there is high emotion as they tearfully contemplate life without her. Debbie wants to get the grandchildren to the hospital before it’s too late, but older sister Sandra thinks all the family by the bedside will make their mum think it’s her last rites. Sister Claire, who is looking after Rose, knows only too well the torment the families go through around end of life decisions: “As doctors and nurses, we have to accept we can’t change everything and there’s not always a miracle cure,” she says. “Once you accept it is happening you have to get it right. You can’t get dying wrong”. Also in Resus, is Kevin, a 55-year-old trucker who jack-knifed his lorry, ‘bullseyed’ the windscreen and rolled down a verge. He was trapped in the wreckage for an hour before being cut free and air lifted to King’s by the Kent air ambulance. He has injuries to his pelvis, neck and head. His wife Janet waits anxiously for news about the seriousness of the injuries. “Modern medicine is perhaps a victim of its own success,” says consultant Malcolm. “Some people’s lives are prolonged in an uncomfortable, undignified state because doctors try and play God sometimes…but we’re not gods”. 24 Hours in A&E is a powerful, intimate - at times humorous, but ultimately heart-warming - portrait of modern Britain in all its diversity.