Breathtaking on ITV1 is a hard-hitting dramatisation of how NHS medics coped through the Covid-19 pandemic – however is Joanne Froggatt‘s character Dr Abbey Henderson an actual individual?
The collection joins acute medication guide Dr Abbey Henderson and her workforce weeks earlier than the UK’s first nationwide lockdown. Coronary heart-wrenching scenes present their wrestle with the primary wave of Covid-19 sufferers.
Operating out of PPE, employees, and beds, Abbey is compelled to make troublesome healthcare choices as her colleagues start to be contaminated with Covid-19.
When the Tory authorities lastly imposed a lockdown, the pandemic stretches Abbey and the workforce to their limits. Viewers will watch in horror as Abbey and the employees confront authorities coverage in relation to care residence discharges and insufficient PPE.
So is Abbey Henderson in Breathtaking an actual individual? And who’s Rachel Clarke? Right here’s every little thing it is advisable know…
Is Abbey Henderson actual in Breathtaking?
Breathtaking concentrates on the primary hand experiences of Acute Common Medication Physician Abbey Henderson, performed by Downton Abbey star Joanne Froggatt.
Dr Abbey Henderson is NOT an actual individual. Nevertheless, her experiences are based mostly in reality.
Originally of Breathtaking on ITV, we’re advised: “This story is predicated on actual experiences of Nationwide Well being Service employees and sufferers through the Covid-19 pandemic.
“The hospital and characters have been created for dramatic functions.”
So whereas the characters are fictional, the tales are sadly all-too true. Author Rachel Clarke is eager to level out that the character of Dr Abbey Henderson is just not her.
Joanne Froggatt advised ED!: “Abbey is predicated on each Rachel’s experiences through the pandemic, but additionally these of many different medical doctors and nurses. She is a fictional character with many various tales integrated into one individual. However each situation within the script is predicated on actuality. Each affected person’s story is predicated on one thing that occurred someplace within the UK. That was an extremely grounding expertise.”
Who’s Rachel Clarke?
Breathtaking is predicated on the guide of the identical title by Rachel Clarke, launched in January 2021. The three half collection has been tailored for tv by Rachel, and former medical doctors Jed Mercurio, and Prasanna Puwanarajah.
The drama stars Joanne Froggatt within the function of a frontline hospital guide – and all accounts are based mostly on doctor-writer Rachel Clarke’s unflinching private memoir of the best public well being disaster in dwelling reminiscence.
Dr Rachel Clarke, who wrote and govt produced the collection, got here from a medical household (her father was a GP) and located the profession path fascinating.
She “liked being at medical faculty to bits” and later “needed the affected person to really feel as if they had been the one factor that mattered to me”. Rachel was working in a hospice as a palliative care physician when Covid-19 arrived.
She says: “Because the pandemic unfolded, I knew from very early on when these terrible haunting photos began to seem from China after which from Northern Italy that this virus was going to have a catastrophic impact within the UK.”
Rachel requested if she may transfer out of the hospice sector right into a hospital setting the place “ward after ward after ward was stuffed with sufferers dying from Covid”. She provides: “The guide Breathtaking is about my very own private experiences and people of others I interviewed in my hospital belief.”
Have been Jed Mercurio and Prasanna Puwanarajah medical doctors?
In addition to Rachel Clarke, each Line of Obligation creator Jed Mecurio and Payback actor Prasanna Puwanarajah had been medics earlier than transferring into TV.
In actual fact, co-writers Prasanna Puwanarajah and Rachel Clarke have identified one another for almost 20 years. When she was a medical scholar in Oxford, he was a really junior physician in his first yr of coaching as a health care provider.
Rachel and Prasanna met in the identical little medical agency and he taught her methods to give individuals injections. She describes him as “this extremely type, enthusiastic and really dedicated younger physician who I regarded as much as then”.
She provides: “Paradoxically sufficient he left medication quickly afterwards however our paths crossed once more with each of us having moved into extra inventive areas of labor in addition to performing medication in my case.”
In the meantime, Lancashire-born Jed Mercurio practiced as a hospital physician for 3 years. He later ventured into writing and penned the BBC medical drama Cardiac Arrest beneath the pseudonym John MacUre.
Is Abbey Henderson actual in Breathtaking? What number of healthcare employees died through the Covid pandemic?
The Workplace for Nationwide Statistics recorded 414 healthcare employees died of Covid-19 from March to December 2020.
In 2021, an estimated 60,000 NHS employees reported signs of Put up-Traumatic Stress as a result of their work within the Covid-19 pandemic.
It’s not but identified what number of medical doctors died by suicide throughout these years.
Learn extra: Breathtaking star Joanne Froggatt discovered love once more after painful divorce
Breathtaking airs on consecutive nights from Monday, February 19, 2024 at 9pm on ITV1.
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