A brand-new documentary series, Surgeons uncovers the powerful human stories at the cutting edge of Irish medicine, looking at both the practitioners, and the patients that go under their knives.
This remarkable fly-on-the-wall documentary series – from the makers of Junior Doctors – offers up-close insights into real life and death situations, going into the operating theatre itself to show the pioneering and high-risk work carried out by Ireland’s leading surgeons. Surgeons looks too at the daily working lives of these commanding, wilful, highly paid, yet formidably talented people.
The series, in four parts, also sheds light on many of the issues facing the health service today – waiting lists, public versus private practice, red tape, hospital politics.
Episode Two: Heart moves to Dublin’s Mater Hospital and the pioneering cardiac surgeon Freddie Wood. He is joined by Mark Redmond of Our Lady’s Hospital in Crumlin.
At the Mater, Jerry O’Leary from Cork has been waiting for a heart transplant for over nine months. He is kept alive on a machine while the search for a suitable donor heart continues. Late at night, the cardiac unit is told that a donor heart is on its way from another hospital – Freddie Wood must decide which of his patients will receive it.
Nine-year-old Conor Murray from Co. Donegal was born with a faulty valve in his heart. Although he looks as healthy as his twin brother, Mark Redmond has to operate now or Conor will not survive into his teens. His anxious parents accompany Conor to the operation in Our Lady’s.
Freddie Wood discusses whether the popular image of surgeons as aloof and arrogant is deserved.