TV review: 24 Hours in A&E

The girl's mother watches helplessly as nurses calmly tend to her daughter, constantly aware that more patients are pouring out of the city's nightclubs and into the waiting area.

Grace fell down a flight of stairs at her mum's flat in London. Now she is strapped to a cold, stiff board, her head engulfed by padding, looking petrified as she tells medics she feels pain all the way up her spine and she can't move her neck.

To add insult to injury, the whole ordeal is being filmed by a Channel 4 crew.

Last night's programme, 24 Hours in A&E, was a ticket to watch other people's misery unfold, broadcasted under the guise of a tribute to the bravery of families and the hard work of hospital staff.

The film makers even pulled the poor mother aside for her to give what could only be described a tribute, while her daughter was still alive and conscious, not to mention panic-stricken, in the next room.

Many of the cases were not so deserving of sympathy, however, and the nurses and other hospital staff did a commendable job in even giving them the time of day.

King's College Hospital sees a steady stream of drunkards with self-inflicted injuries on the weekends, but the nurses remain bright eyed and bushy tailed in the face of it all.

Other cases are unavoidable, the sort that come in steadily, no matter what day of the week it is.

One of the patients was an 88-year-old woman who was brought in with chest pains. She told how she didn't want to bother or worry her family by complaining, which is apparently common.

In this case it was the woman's son who was pulled aside for a little one-on-one time with the camera. He was set free after he had given a suitably emotional account of his mother's on-going condition.

And again, just in time, before anyone could suspect the programme makers of benefiting from their subjects' misery, they cut to a nurse saying how brave the elderly woman was: "They don't make 'em like that anymore."

Grace, the 12-year-old girl who fell down the stairs, was eventually given the all clear. After being kept under observation for a while she was let home, giving viewers the happy ending that storyline had needed.

But who knows? In a few years she could be back in that same waiting room as one of the entourage of 'hoodies' who make up such a large proportion of the weekend patients the staff declared them at one point: 'our people'.

It was the glaring contrast between those two groups – those who were truly deserving of help and those who were there only because of their own stupid behaviour – that provided the programme's food for thought.

Most of us will have been in an A&E waiting room at one time or another, whether as a patient or with someone we care about.

In that situation it is natural to think of your case as the most pressing at hand, the one that simply must be seen next.

But nurses and doctors have to treat all patients equally. And once they are finished with one, no matter how upsetting the outcome may have been, they must move on to the next with equal attention.

It is certainly not something I could do, so, for what it's worth, here's my hat's off to them.

Will Ackermann