Airdate: Young Doctors

Nine has now scheduled Young Doctors, its eight-part observational series following seven junior doctors at John Hunter Hospital in Newcastle, NSW (as opposed to the revival of The Young Doctors which was floated but abandoned).

It begins Wednesday, October 26 at 8.00pm.

Readers may remember I ran a preview of this one last month. Here it is again.

What if your first day in a new job was literally a matter of life and death? That’s the real-life prospect facing these interns as they begin a three-month posting at the regional John Hunter Hospital in Newcastle, NSW.

As newly qualified enthusiastic professionals, these young first and second-year doctors are stepping into something the public has an admiration for – being a doctor. We all trust them with the lives of our children, our parents and our loved ones, yet underneath their scrubs our young doctors are still growing up.

We follow the interns as they make their first diagnosis, perform their first emergency surgery and face their first Saturday night in accident and emergency. Their patients and supervisors are important, but they are more of a backdrop. In this series it’s the group of young doctors we get to know best.

The interns are Dr Colinda Holmes and Dr Rory Gledhill – Surgery; Dr Kate Haggar – Obstetrics and Gynaecology; Dr Leila Usher – Emergency; Dr Ineke Wever – Cardiothoracic; Dr Michael Burgess – General Medicine; and Dr Mike Pomroy – Medical Acute Care Unit. All are in their mid to late twenties and all will have someone’s life in their hands.

From day one they are thrown in at the deep end with heart attacks, car accidents, binge drinkers, embarrassing procedures and difficult patients who look them in the eye and ask, “How many times have you done this before?”

As well as working together the interns will live together in a six-bedroom house which is, ironically, a converted hospital.

The series will track the doctors at work as well as providing fly-on-the-wall coverage of their home lives, socialising and recreation. You will see them together at home at day’s end or beginning as they reflect on each other’s progress, work towards deciding what kind of doctor they want to be, and share their emotional ups and downs.

This inspiring series will present the difficulties they face in juggling their great new responsibilities, as well as the trials and tribulations of being a young doctor in one of the liveliest cities in Australia.