ON THE FRONTLINE
My life was wrecked by the Covid pandemic – ITV’s new drama series ‘Breathtaking’ is shocking… but true
Dr MacDermott contracted Covid twice and now uses a mobility scooter because of spinal damage
GRITTY new Covid drama Breathtaking is hitting our screens from tomorrow.
Based on the chronicles of frontline doctor Rachel Clarke, it is a searing account of life in a big city hospital thrown into turmoil as the virus spreads.
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The ITV1 drama airs over three consecutive nights and stars Joanne Froggatt as under-pressure Dr Abbey Henderson.
It has already been hailed as one of the year’s most hard-hitting shows. But what do those health workers who actually experienced the pandemic think?
Dr Nathalie MacDermott, 42, from Cambridge, worked in a major London hospital during the coronavirus outbreak and contracted Covid twice.
Because of spinal damage, the ex-runner has gone from being a volleyball player to using a mobility scooter.
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Here, she shares her verdict on the drama.
THERE is no doubt that Covid has cast a shadow over many of us that will linger for years.
I contracted Covid twice. The second time I developed spinal damage and long Covid, which means life will never be the same for me.
I now use crutches and a mobility scooter to get around — but at least I’m alive.
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Many still carry a lot of trauma, so of course this drama will be a hard watch and upsetting.
But would I urge you to watch it? If you want to know the truth about what it was like for us in the NHS, then absolutely.
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It accurately conveys the frustration, anger and stress people felt.
Even before we had gone into the first national lockdown on March 23, 2020, there was mixed messaging, with different hospital departments given different guidance.
Joanne Froggatt’s character, doctor Abbey Henderson, works as a consultant in an A&E department.
I was a paediatric infectious diseases registrar, which in the pecking order is one notch down.
On around March 2, 2020, I moved from King’s College London, where I do research, to London’s Great Ormond Street.
I’d been aware of Covid since December 31, 2019, when I’d read about a cluster of pneumonia cases of unknown causes in China.
I knew it was coming. I knew it was big.
Before lockdown I was working in the bone marrow transplant unit.
The children there were already vulnerable so were in isolation cubicles and tested regularly.
We were so dependent back then — very naively, I think — on the guidance: That only people who’d visited countries with known outbreaks, like Italy and China, should be tested.
Yet we knew there were UK cases and the potential for asymptomatic spread.
As we veered towards the end of March, staff began to get sick. There was no PPE protection.
Just like Dr Henderson, all I had was a paper-thin surgical blue mask and a flimsy, thin, plastic apron.
In our staff room — about the size of a small galley kitchen and sometimes fitting as many as eight doctors — we weren’t even allowed to wear masks.
Towards the end of March I contracted Covid, through a colleague who tested positive the following day.
By the time I returned in mid-April there were more cases.
Just like Dr Henderson, all I had was a
Nathalie MacDermott
paper-thin surgical blue mask and a flimsy, thin plastic apron. In our staff room we weren’t
even allowed to wear masks
I offered to work in adult Covid care, due to my background in infectious diseases and work in West Africa during the peak of the Ebola virus in 2014. I was repeatedly ignored.
By April we were seeing children with multi-system inflammatory syndrome too — a serious illness caused by Covid.
But what I had not realised was that in the middle of March, the PPE guidance for those of us working with known Covid cases had been downgraded.
Despite working with Covid patients, we didn’t meet the criteria for PPE that was more than the flimsy mask I’d already been wearing. I was shocked. I initially advised staff to wear a higher grade.
Staff members were buying rain ponchos from Amazon because they offered better protection than what we had.
But the Infection Prevention And Control Team would get staff to take them OFF because they did not have CE safety certification.
I raised my concerns with many of them, just as Dr Henderson does with her superiors.
Like Dr Henderson, I wasn’t listened to, and that’s what probably cuts deepest about this drama.
I questioned why we couldn’t wear a mask that was better than what we had. I was told that there were 20,000 of them in the NHS trust.
No one was listened to
Staff were put at risk because bosses were worried we might run out. It was ridiculous. If this was Ebola, I told them, you wouldn’t be making these sorts of decisions.
I was told: “This is a completely different virus.” “Yes,” I said. “It’s far more infectious than Ebola.”
For weeks it felt like I was banging my head against a brick wall.
I chose to serve my patients. But you wouldn’t send a worker on to a building site with a helmet that’s not up to the job.
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For all of this time, just as we see on Dr Henderson’s ward, staff were getting sick. There were two members of staff in intensive care.
One was a senior nurse. She died, leaving behind teenage children.
By the end of May I had contracted Covid for a second time — and this time I didn’t recover.
I was into competitive volleyball. Now I can’t do more than one thing a day or I’m flat on my back.
To go from walking four miles a day at GOSH and running several times a week is quite the change.
I tend to be a positive person. I always think I will make the best of my life. But I would say I am left with a slight identity crisis now.
I just got my certificate — my completion of training — to be a consultant like Dr Henderson is.
I hope it will highlight what healthcare workers were dealing with and what level of protection they were being given
Dr Nathalie McDermott
It’s something I have worked towards since 2006 when I completed my medical training. But now I can’t be that in the way I would have liked.
The episode includes footage of PM Boris Johnson’s promise to give the NHS everything it needs.
I’m sure he believed it when he said it, but they didn’t.
I’m now part of Covid-19 Group Action For Healthcare Workers, a body of frontline workers pledging legal action against the NHS for negligent workplace exposure to Covid, resulting in injury and financial loss, and we are still urging NHS workers to join us.
I hope Breathtaking will help people understand why we are taking this class action, because so many people spoke up and no one was listened to.
I hope it will highlight what healthcare workers were dealing with and what level of protection they were being given.
It’s one thing to have people acknowledging that mistakes were made, it’s another to learn lessons from it.
We have another outbreak of Covid in our community right now.
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Yet hospital workers are still being given blue masks. When will lessons finally be learned?
- To find out more about the Covid-19 Group Action for Healthcare Workers, go to
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