Hugo, Alyson, Chloé are still there. But in this season 2, they are no longer interns in “internal medicine”, but in the emergency room. Forget everything you’ve seen from the emergencies of the eponymous American series or later versions, also very fictionalized, Grey’s Anatomy style. Being in the emergency room of the Robert-Ballanger hospital in Hippocrateseven if a screen separates us from it, gives the impression of being in total immersion.
Filming interrupted by Covid-19
The starting pitch has nothing to do with the current global health situation. There is no (yet) Covid-19, saturated resuscitation services, caregivers at their wit’s end. But the story served by Thomas Lilti, the director, is not so far off. And for good reason… When the epidemic broke out in France, the series was filming and Thomas Lilti, a doctor by training, put everything on hold to go and lend a hand at the hospital. He recounts his experience in his book The oathpublished at the beginning of the year by Grasset editions.
It was necessary to free up the premises of the series, which were lent by a real Parisian hospital, the Robert-Ballanger, in the 93. The production relieved of the equipment missing at the time: gloves, protective gowns, etc. Inevitably, with such a shattering dive into reality, the scenario that we discover today is affected. It tells the story of panic, XXL version.
Season 2 arrives as a kind of introduction to what will follow in real life (the series takes place a few months before the first confinement): the complete overflow of the French hospital, “a sinking boat”, in the words of its creator. What the medical personnel on the bridge of the coronavirus have testified to, for more than a year, via social networks and the media. This second part ofHippocrates opens on a flooded emergency department, in the literal sense: a pipe gave way, literally flooding the floor, forcing people to move elsewhere. The place of repatriation chosen will be the internal medicine service where Hugo, Alyson, Chloé and Arben officiate.
We lack everything, but we continue anyway
For lack of space and time, the patients are piled up in the corridors and in the rooms. And we ask all young doctors (not at all trained in this way of working) to become emergency doctors, without (almost) suitable training, as the cases are pressing. 24 hours, 48 hours, 72 hours of watch and only 3 hours of sleep on the clock. “We are understaffed, we have to close the service, we are exhausted“, claim the characters (who for some are real doctors). Contrary to what we are used to seeing in the classic hospital series, the characters embody this fatigue, carry it into their features.
What Thomas Lilti underlines, in general, is that even before the Covid-19, you have no choice when you are a doctor in the hospital: there is only one option, to continue. To the detriment of his physical and mental health, to the detriment of extremely serious errors which result from the exhaustion of the teams. Whether Hippocrates distracted and passionate, the series also gives a concrete and realistic idea of what we do not always visualize, when we have not walked the corridors of a hospital during the Covid-19 crisis.
Read also:
- Coronavirus: how are hospitals taking care of their caregivers?
- Covid-19: nurses on the verge of burnout
- Being a caregiver in times of coronavirus means multiplying the risk of contracting it by 3.4
- In immersion in sheaves, with Céline, nurse
