Hospital Dramas or Hospital Documentaries

Hospital dramas and documentaries on TV are on the increase not only in ratings but also in the number being shown and not the soap type of drama, but the real thing. Casualty and Holby City, have been going for years and before that (back in our day) Dr. Kildare was the one to watch. Now you can watch babies being born without the use of props and operations on 'real' people, but do we really want to see and know about all of this? Well, it seems we do, one such documentary 'Hospital' examined the relationships between teenagers and the NHS. Consultants, Surgeons, nurses and midwives speak with unprecedented candour about the problems they face with one particular episode (Episode 5, Series 2, Channel 4) covering the fact that for the first time in their careers, doctors are seeing people in their 20's with lifestyle-related liver disease. Maybe the wrong age group are watching the drams instead of the documentaries, either way I guess if it gets a message over to the younger generation that 'life is not a dress rehearsal', then that is a good thing. I know if I'd seen some of the reasons for liver disease and knew I could cause it if I carried on the way I was, then it would have made me think again. One would hope that this would also be the same for the younger generation of today.