Rachel Clarke has urged the public to watch ‘Breathtaking’ to get a better understanding of what nurses experienced during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Joanne Froggatt stars as a nurse in the ITV drama
The 52-year-old doctor has had her memoirs of working through the COVID-19 pandemic adapted into an ITV drama and while she has praised the series for its "attention to detail", she also recalled the "fear" of that time all came back to her when she was on set.
In an opinion column for the Daily Mirror newspaper, she wrote: “There was a moment, standing on set, when I started to feel my chest constricting. We’d turned three storeys of a disused college campus in Belfast into an NHS hospital complete with a Covid ward, ICU and A+E.
“The attention to detail was phenomenal. Stains on the ceilings, scuffs on the walls. The long scratches you see inside the entrance of every A+E made by trolleys bashing in from the ambulances outside over the years.
"But nothing prepared me for the experience of watching the cameras beginning to roll. Suddenly it all came back, the alarms, the monitors, the claustrophobia, the fear.”
Rachel then recalled how she felt during the time, and how “immensely challenging” it was to translate that onto screens.
She continued: “We were scared, unprotected, overwhelmed and bewildered. The guidance rarely made sense, the PPE was unforgivably inadequate (my only visor, for example, had been made by children from a local Scout group), and the inertia from the Government was absolutely terrifying.
“To put this all on screen – unvarnished, as we lived it – was going to be immensely challenging for viewers. But it mattered, I believed. It had to be shown. Healthcare workers risked their lives to save others. The very least the public could do, I felt strongly, was be willing to bear witness to what that felt like.”
The drama stars Joanne Froggatt, 43, and documents her character's time as a nurse as she struggles to cope with the mounting demands of the health crisis.
Reflecting on reading the script, the actress revealed she “shed tears”.
She told RadioTimes.com: "I was blown away. I actually shed tears reading the scripts, and I don't think that's ever happened to me.
“I've welled up before, amazing scripts do hit you, but I was sat with tears streaming down my face at one point," she added. "It was so unbelievably affecting."