24 hours in A&E

My father in laws fishing boat was featured in a recent Coastguard documentary. No permission obtained at all. They had their faces blurred out but the first they knew of it was when a colleague watched it when it aired and sent a text round

@FixTheBone

I get that there isn't a camera man standing over you and it is all fixed cameras but it still makes me uncomfortable. I'd be paranoid someone would watch the footage before I denied consent and just the fact that it existed in the first place would bother me.

It just feels like they are feeding off other people's suffering. Like I said in an earlier post, someone comes in with a sprained ankle, they probably won't be bothered about having footage of that. But if they hear about unusual and serious/life threatening case just brought in, the producers and directors must be jumping up and down with excitement.

Do they get pushy if you say no? In an "Just think about it" or "OK, we'll check in with you after you've been discharged, just in case you change your mind," or "Let us just show you the footage and see how you feel then" kind of way? That is when I'd probably go from a polite "No, thank you" to "There's the door. Please fuck off".

yeah the human stories are the best bit of 24h.in.A&E.

I have seen a few episodes where the patient died; I thought it was well handled what happened. Celebration of the lives they lived, every time.

There are bolshy awful patients, watch Attacks in A&E. But they don't get on 24h.in.A&E.

What purpose do these programmes serve?

I've worked in two hospitals where these series were being filmed...

I wouldn't say privacy is being invaded. No film crews involved either time, everything done with preinstalled fixed angle cameras. And if the person decides not to consent, the footage is never seen / used.

24 hours in A&E is one of the few medical programs I've watched, precisely because it doesn't have a load of medical detail in it, but a lot of the human interaction and back story which I often lose touch with at the sharp end of things.

I just realised I worded that really badly! But you get the gist

Not the same program but where we live the hospital got in a lot of trouble. They were filming in the hospital, in the maternity area and it was not adequately signed. Several families were really upset when they were told when receiving bad news about their baby had been filmed without them realising. Obviously it didn’t go any further because they didn’t give consent. We may or may not have been one of these families and it may or may not have made a very distressing time worse…

the film company were fined

I presume they don’t use that footage so ask family ?

Yes they can deny consent. Nobody is forced into doing it.

Totally agree. Even if you say no later, you've still had a bunch of non-medical strangers watching you in a vulnerable state. And recording your experience - whether or not you later say it can be used.

I know an A&E nurse who worked in one of the hospitals. The filming is done a long time before the show actually comes out. There is a lot of work to do with editing, consent, interviews etc. Sometimes staff are pixelated out I guess because they didn't want to be in it.

I've only watched it a few times, but they don't seem to include anyone actually dying.
I once worked in a magazine office and a TV company suggested doing a reality show about our office. Luckily the Editor said "no", but I wouldn't have agreed to be in the show. I saw a reality show about the editor of a different magazine who I'd worked for. They made her out to be a total drunk, which she wasn't.

@Justleaveitblankthen You'll be unsurprised to hear that nope, they don't pay you at all!

My sibling's emergency was one entirely of their own doing (without saying too much, they made a decision that carried a lot of risk and ended up life changing) so they decided to continue as part of the episode to hopefully show others the dangers of making this particular decision.

Otherwise, I don't think we would've ended up being a part of it.

If you're so concerned about violation of privacy why are you watching the program?

Please tell me that this top rating programme offers generous payment for everyone's time and trouble throughout?

Don't watch Police Interceptors then.
A lot of the Jo public types on there are definitely vulnerable.
Or Can't Pay We'll take it Away : they blur the faces on that now, but didn't used to
All those programmes (multiple cloned) about air ambulance rescue...
Or Attacks in A&E

I agree, shows like that are basically unethical. I don't know how the hospitals can allow it.

You're going to wear a wrist band every day in case you somehow end up in car crash and can't say no to filming, seems a bit OTT.

LOL. I was joking @wbanso but perhaps didn't make my post jokey enough.

Yes, I still can't believe it's not considered a breach of human rights, it's insane. I don't watch those shows.

I had a camera person come out with me on the ambulance for a similar programme quite a few years ago now, though it didn’t really feature some of the harder hitting things you see in todays programmes.

We could also tell the camera person not to film at an incident if we wanted, or to film from a certain point/distance away and they would do exactly as we asked. Sometimes I told them not to even bother getting out of the ambulance.

There was a lot of paperwork to sign and conversations at various points and everyone was invited to watch any footage they hoped to use to decide if you wanted to consent to it being shown.

I've been in a similar situation, where I was offered a badge if I didn't want to be filmed.

Anyone with a badge was either edited out or blurred in the final footage.

Static cameras are set up all over the department at St George's, and there is an army of production team members (that will wear brown scrubs) There is no actual camera operator in the department, so it's not as physically intrusive as it looks.
Filming is indeed 24/7 for about 6-8 weeks for each period.
There is not someone watching the live footage constantly. If an 'interesting' job comes in then one of the production team will obviously seek out the patient or their family to gain consent to potentially use their story/footage. It is not a hard sell.
They also have to gain consent from hospital staff and ambulance crews.
If the story is broadcast, they will inform you of when with a further chance to rescind consent.

In its early years, first filmed at Kings College hospital then later St George's, I thought it was very sensitively done and also highlighted the utter shit that the ED and ambulance crews had to deal with.
Then it become very formulaic, almost samey.

All fixed cameras when we were there. No crews, just one producer who asked consent and gave us mics clipped on.