I was terrified for my kids while working on Covid ward… they couldn’t understand why I did it, says Breathtaking doctor
LYING in a hospital bed, her body is drenched in sweat while a ventilator breathes for her.
Gravely ill with Covid, treatment is now futile and a nurse reads aloud notes sent by loved ones before silently switching off the machines.
But the patient isn’t a stranger. She’s a much-loved member of hospital staff, infected with the virus by those she cared for.
Visitors are banned, so doctor colleagues stand at the foot of her bed to pay their final respects.
The emotional scene from ITV drama Breathtaking, which concludes tonight, lays bare the horrors endured by NHS staff who worked on the frontline during the pandemic.
The unflinching series is based on the best-selling book by real-life NHS doctor Rachel Clarke, a palliative care specialist and mum-of-two.
She told The Sun that after losing a number of colleagues in the first wave, she feared for her own life – and lived in fear of bringing the deadly virus home to her family.
“I have friends who died in intensive care. In my hospital, two porters, one nurse and one administrator died of Covid,” she said.
“And we all believe that at least the first three of those members of staff caught it in the hospital.
“It was absolutely devastating to think that these incredibly hard-working, brave, ordinary and yet extraordinary human beings, choosing to put themselves in harm’s way, to risk their own lives to help others ultimately lose their own lives.”
Rachel, 51, added: “A lot of us made our wills during Covid. We were very worried indeed. We knew that we could catch Covid and die from it because our colleagues were doing just that.
“And that is something you never expect to need to do as an NHS doctor. We all went into medicine to save lives, not expecting to risk our own lives.”
And she hopes the series, which stars Downton Abbey actress Joanne Froggatt, will prompt a public outcry like the hit ITV drama Mr Bates vs The Post Office.
Rachel said: “With Mr Bates, it was an example of television telling a story that many people knew, but that they just weren’t hearing.
“It was the power of televisual storytelling that suddenly made people hear the story and connect to the story and care about it emotionally.
“I very much hope the same will happen with this drama. I think people need to understand what the NHS is experiencing… you simply had to be there to know what it was like.”
Former broadcast journalist and documentary maker Rachel came to medicine later in life.
She left journalism aged 29 to pursue a medical degree before beginning work as a junior doctor in 2009.
She had already published two best-selling books before Breathtaking came out in 2021, which started out as her personal diary.
Before the pandemic Rachel, who lives in Oxfordshire with husband Dave, 53, a commercial pilot, and their children Abbey, 13, and seven-year-old Finn, was working at Katharine House, a hospice in Oxford.
She bravely volunteered to be re-deployed to the frontline, working at the Horton General Hospital in Banbury and the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford.
She said: “I found the build up to the first lockdown scary, as everyone did, and when I’m stressed I can’t sleep.
My children found it very hard to understand why I was leaving the hospice and going into the hospital… My son was angry about that, which is absolutely understandable
Dr Rachel Clarke
“Often I’d just get up and sit at my laptop in the kitchen in the dead of night. I didn’t think anything was going to be published at that stage.
“It was cathartic, almost a form of therapy. But gradually, as time went by, I started to realise that this was a record of sorts.
“It was only my experience, but it was my testimony as an NHS doctor and I wanted the public to know what was going on behind hospital doors… When staff watch it, I want them to say, ‘Yes, that’s what it felt like, looked like, that’s what we went through’.”
Many of the scenes from the series are taken from Rachel’s direct experiences, including her children’s anger that she had chosen to work on the frontline.
“My children found it very hard to understand why I was leaving the hospice and going into the hospital,” she said.
“My son was angry about that, which is absolutely understandable.
“You are meant to love your children more than anyone so why on earth are you going off to care for other people?”
She added: “In particular, I was frightened of bringing the virus back to my husband and kids.”
Lead actress was ‘first choice’
Rachel co-wrote the dramatisation of her 2021 book, set in a fictionalised hospital and filmed in a disused university building, with Line of Duty’s Jed Mercurio and Prasanna Puwanarajah, both former doctors.
Rachel met Prasanna, who played Martin Bashir in The Crown, while at medical school.
She said: “I was a medical student and he was in his first year as a doctor. He taught me how to put a cannula in.”
The series depicts staff wearing bin bags as protective clothing due to a lack of correct personal protective equipment (PPE).
One of those is healthcare assistant Davina, who dies after catching Covid – a storyline inspired by Rachel’s own experiences.
Very soon into the first script, I started shedding a tear or two, and that’s never happened to me before in my 27 years of reading scripts
Joanne Froggatt
“Throughout the pandemic we had to find creative ways of bringing intimacy into intensive care,” she explained.
“When those patients were a member of staff, many colleagues would write messages or record a favourite song to be read or played.
“It was some way of connecting with a valued member of staff, taken by Covid.”
Award-winning actress Joanne plays Dr Abbey Henderson, a fictionalised version of Rachel, named after her daughter.
Joanne said of the role: “Very soon into the first script, I started shedding a tear or two, and that’s never happened to me before in my 27 years of reading scripts.
“Nothing affected me in the way this did, and I desperately wanted to have the honour of playing Abbey and be a part of this story.”
Rachel said Joanne, 43, who wears a face mask for much of the show, was her “first choice” to play Abbey and is a “natural born NHS doctor”.
“It’s like looking at a mirror of myself, especially when she is dealing with patients. I get emotional because I am transported back to those early days of 2020,” Rachel said.
“She had read all my books, she had researched the pandemic and NHS experiences relentlessly. And she brought this real passion to telling the part. She wanted to do the NHS justice.
“She wanted to be completely authentic… She could definitely convince you that she’s capable of taking out your appendix!”
Enduring trauma
More than 850 UK healthcare workers are thought to have died of Covid between March and December 2020, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS), but former Health Secretary Matt Hancock estimated in June 2021 that the figure was more like 1,500.
Research suggests an estimated 60,000 NHS workers could be living with post-traumatic stress as a result of the pandemic.
Another study also found one in five healthcare workers meet the threshold for diagnosable illnesses like depression and anxiety.
Rachel said: “In the winter of 2020, I started having full-blown panic attacks. Something I’d never experienced in my life before.
“That was a direct result of how awful conditions were. One day I was driving along to work and it was as though my body started muting.
“I had to pull over on the side of the road because I couldn’t physically drive.
“I felt like I was dying. I had chest pain and was fighting to breathe.”
While Rachel feels “very lucky” to have had several sessions with a psychologist, she said the trauma of working through a pandemic has “never really been processed”.
“You go straight back into huge pressures at work without any space to reflect,” she said.
“We’re losing many brilliant experienced members of staff at the moment. It’s not because they’ve stopped wanting to care for patients. It’s because they can’t do it anymore.”
Breathtaking concludes at 9pm tonight on ITV1 and the series can be streamed on ITVX.