HOSPITAL

Filmed, Produced and Directed by Dan Howell
Executive Producers: Simon Dickson, Lorraine Charker-Phillips, Jackie Waldock, Eric Harwood, Rachel Morgan
Series Producers: Gayl Patterson, Megan Just-Truelove
Producers: Tom Colville (S4); Hannah Blackwell (S5); Poppy Begum; Kiran Sira; Alice O’Brien
Editors: Simon Cooper, Simon Richards (S4); Finlay Milne (S5)
Edit Producers: Mark Rossiter (S4); Jack Walton (S5)

Award-winning documentary series, renowned for its frank and journalistic examination of the enormous pressures facing the NHS, and the remarkable people who keep it running.

For Series 4 I made a film called WAR IN THE MIND about the difficulties brain injury patients face in accessing rehabilitation, with rehab beds in increasingly short supply. At the Walton Centre in Liverpool (the country’s only dedicated specialist neurological hospital trust) I met Sophie, an impressive young woman who had found herself on intensive care for 18 months after a dangerous and inexplicable swelling of her brain, and who was desperate to get home. I also filmed with Tom, who sustained a brain injury in a car crash and who frequently challenged staff on his ward by trying to escape.

For Series 5 I returned to Liverpool and concentrated on filming unusual stories in the city’s main A&E department at the Royal Liverpool Hospital, making a film called FREE FOR ALL? which features the hospital trust making the difficult decision to ban a repeat-attender from A&E, and the devastating story of an amputee made homeless because of the social housing crisis.

I’ve also cut multiple films for Hospital, including about patients with Functional Neurological Disorder (FND), a little-known and chronically underfunded condition, and a film about the people in North London caught up in the second wave of the Covid-19 pandemic, which is filled with tragedy and hope in equal measure.