Breathtaking creator Rachel Clarke on "buried trauma" caused by COVID
"We have a frontline NHS workforce that remains deeply scarred."
Palliative care doctor Rachel Clarke, who wrote ITV COVID drama Breathtaking, has spoken about the devastating long-term impact of the pandemic on NHS staff who worked on the frontline.
"I don't think it's possible to overstate the ongoing scale of traumatic feelings in NHS staff to this day provoked by COVID," she said.
"I find if I talk to anyone in my hospital about COVID for more than a few minutes, they will start to compulsively relive the traumas they witnessed and endured through the pandemic."
But despite that, "staff don't talk about this publicly", said Clarke, not even to one another.
"We all went through the same thing, so why would you?" she explained. "You feel as if you just have to get on with it. But actually, we have a frontline NHS workforce that remains deeply scarred by COVID and what we witnessed."
She added: "I dearly wish that every member of NHS staff had the opportunity and the resources to talk to somebody about that if they so wished, because it is buried trauma at the moment."
The three-part series, which is based on Clarke's 2021 memoir, stars Joanne Froggatt as Dr Abbey Henderson, an acute medicine consultant who is "thrown into this maelstrom of pressures and tensions and traumas" when the outbreak takes hold.
"She finds herself in a world that is alien, bewildering and at times doesn't even seem to make sense to her," said Clarke.
"She is traumatised, frightened, she starts to become outspoken, she challenges authority, she is devastated at times, full of guilt and grief."
Read more:
- Joanne Froggatt on Breathtaking: "This isn't just a retelling of COVID"
- Why it's not "too soon" for ITV's Breathtaking
- Breathtaking shows "extraordinary humanity of patients and staff"
But in spite of that, Abbey "finds her convictions about what really matters to her as a doctor wrestling with the global pandemic and goes on an astonishing journey to places, actions and behaviours she would never have imagined for a millisecond she might have been capable of before COVID hit her hospital".
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Authors
Abby Robinson is the Drama Editor for Radio Times, covering TV drama and comedy titles. She previously worked at Digital Spy as a TV writer, and as a content writer at Mumsnet. She possesses a postgraduate diploma and a degree in English Studies.
