THESE are the real life junior doctors set to become TV stars when a new fly-on-the-wall documentary starts broadcasting from Newcastle later this year.
BBC 3 show Junior Doctors - Your Life In Their Hands, follows seven recently qualified medics as they do their rounds at the city’s General Hospital and the Royal Victoria Infirmary.
Cameras will follow the rookie seven as they swap textbooks for stethoscopes and don scrubs for the first time in the hectic wards and corridors of the city’s two busiest hospitals.
The doctors, whose specialities range from pediatrics to plastic surgery, will live together for three months and the programme will show the difficulties faced as they cope with juggling the responsibilities as well as the trials and tribulations of being a young doctor in one of the most lively city’s in Europe.
And whilst the doctors all hail from different parts of the country and globe, one of the unlikely stars is from the region itself.
Keir Shiels is a 28-year-old from Gateshead who is in his second year of the two-year foundation programme. He is the oldest of the seven doctors, and had previously received a degree in neuro science and psychology before deciding to train as a doctor.
He decided to make a career change after becoming disillusioned with his role in his previous job.
He said: “I got really fed up of assessing patients and then not doing anything about it as a scientist. And that’s why I went into medicine - it’s a trite reason saying: ‘Oh, I really wanted to help people’, but I did.”
Dr Shiels is an advocate of building up a strong relationship between doctor and patient, and believes that a good bedside manner is the most important thing for a good doctor to have.
He said: “The best thing about being a junior doctor is being the smiling face that makes somebody feel better - and I don’t just mean it by relieving their pain and relieving their infection and making them breathe more easily. I just mean making them feel better, when you walk in and you’re happy and you uplift someone’s spirits.”
Each year around 7,500 junior doctors start work in hospitals all over Great Britain.
Of these, around 150 first and second year juniors take up positions at the General and at the RVI on the first Wednesday of every year. The day is rather nicknamed Black Wednesday as death rates on this day rise by around 6%.
The show is scheduled to start airing in the middle of next month on BBC 3.
Page 2 - Meet the starring cast >>
