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Wednesday 17
December
2003
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ARGENTINA:
Doctors and Patients Become TV Heroes
Marcela Valente
BUENOS AIRES, (IPS) - Without a
doubt, it was the first episode of
Argentina's E-24 reality show, set in a
Buenos Aires public hospital, that had
the greatest impact, with its close-up
images of the birth of María Carla
Schmieloz's baby.
''I had contractions, and while they
were taking me to the delivery room, my
husband told me they were going to film
the birth,'' Schmieloz told IPS.
The baby, who is now five months old,
''was born with his eyes open, as if he
knew they were filming him,'' said
Schmieloz, a young woman from the
northwestern province of Tucumán who
moved with her husband to Buenos Aires
when he found a job here, after she
became pregnant.
''I get all emotional when I see the
images, because it's my son. My family
in Tucumán told me that the day the
programme was aired, everybody was
'pushing' with me every time the doctor
said to push, and that they were crying
and hugging each other when Lucas
finally came out, and they put him on my
chest,'' she said.
''Emergencias-24'' (E-24) has turned the
doctors at a public hospital in
Argentina into stars.
''Some of the doctors have been asked
for their autographs, not because
they're famous, but because lots of
people truly admire them for what they
do,'' one of the show's producers,
Ricardo Pichetto, told IPS.
''They are real urban heroes who have to
deal with serious problems for hours on
end, without seeing their families, and
sometimes just catching catnaps on a
cot,'' he said.
In E-24, ''We tell a patient's story, of
how they came to the hospital, and a few
days later we show how they're doing,
how their recovery is going, visiting
them in their own homes when possible,''
said Pichetto.
''But we also show what's going on with
the doctors, their concern, anguish,
anger or other emotions towards each
patient.''
The programme is filmed in an ambulance
and in the Fernández Hospital in Buenos
Aires, whose emergency room attends some
200 patients a day. Nine fixed cameras
film continuously in the emergency room,
and several shoulder-held cameras follow
staff-members and patients around.
The E-24 team, made up of 35 people,
belongs to Cuatrocabezas, a local TV
production company. There are no actors
or rehearsals, but a great deal of
preparatory work is required to obtain
authorisation from all of the parties
involved.
A selection process was carried out
among the hospital staff willing to be
filmed.
''Of the roughly 100 people on duty in
the emergency room, half gave their
consent'' to appear in the programme,
said Pichetto. The team then selected
the most telegenic doctors,
psychologists, nurses and ambulance
drivers.
The director of the TV production school
Tea Imagen, Emilio Cartoy Díaz, told IPS
that his students were shown the
unedited material, to allow them to
analyse the differences with the final
product.
''They have an excellent group of
editors and scriptwriters who decide
which story to tell and how to tell
it,'' he said.
The programme belongs to the genre known
in TV jargon as a ''docu-soap'', which
shows scenes from real life like a
documentary, but using narrative
techniques typical of fictional series,
since the editors cut and organise the
material, and the script-writers work
with the dialogue, to give the
characters a sense of continuity.
The production team also includes a
physician who appears in some scenes to
ask his colleagues questions, in order
to clarify the situation for viewers,
and who visits patients who have been
discharged. But most of the scenes
simply show the ''real'' unadulterated
world of the hospital.
The programme's ratings have surpassed
the expectations of the producers.
''People like it because it tells the
stories of real people who they can
identify with, and because it's not
morbid...unlike some TV series about
doctors. We always try to show a
positive ending,'' said Pichetto.
He explained that some issues have been
marked as off-limits by the producers,
and that in some cases, people refuse to
be filmed, or to allow their images to
be aired.
In a suicide case, for example, neither
the corpse nor the mourning family are
shown, only the doctor who expresses his
or her own feelings. In general, death
is seen as a private issue. Nor are
cases of child sexual abuse covered, he
said.
One of the programme's aims is to raise
awareness of the role that public
hospitals play in society, and to show
the work of doctors as real people with
feelings of their own who have to make
tough judgment calls and deal with
complex issues and a high level of
stress on a daily basis.
The programme also carries out
consciousness-raising and prevention on
accidents, alcoholism, drug abuse and
other health issues.
Each episode follows five or six
separate cases, which generally begin
with the ambulance ride to the hospital
and end a few days later, when the
patient goes home.
Patients are seen resisting admission to
the hospital, arguing with the staff,
suffering nervous crises, calling their
families, and involved in a wide range
of situations that can be bizarre,
bittersweet or even funny.
In the case of an accident victim, the
programme goes beyond the injuries
sustained, describing, for example, how
someone who crosses streets without
paying attention, seemingly lost in
their own world, might be in need of
psychiatric assistance as part of the
treatment.
A young man who bought a motorcycle to
go to work, but was unable to afford a
helmet, shows up with his wife, young
daughter, and a skull injury. A little
girl who was burnt due to her mother's
negligence is admitted to the hospital
along with her healthy little sister,
because their unemployed single mother
has no one to leave the younger sister
with.
The doctors often get annoyed when
patients refuse or fail to follow their
instructions.
A critically ill elderly woman refuses
to be admitted to the hospital, saying
that if she stays there, she will die.
She later tells the psychologist that
when she was a little girl, her father
had both of his legs amputated in a
hospital, where he stayed for years
until his death.
The psychologist helps viewers
understand the apparently irrational
behaviour of the elderly woman, who was
required to sign a document stating that
she assumed responsibility for returning
home against the doctors' wishes.
Other patients are desperate, and even
hit the doctors, or simply make them
work double. In one episode, an
ambulance picks up an intoxicated man
who complains of pain in his chest.
On the way to the hospital, he tells the
doctor that he had already suffered a
heart attack and was on medication.
''What medicine do you take?'' asks the
doctor. ''Four or five litres of wine,''
the man jokes.
In the hospital, the patient undergoes
tests and is told to stay, but he leaves
anyway. Several hours later an ambulance
is called to the other side of the city.
''I had a couple of drinks,'' says the
intoxicated man, who is now lying on the
sidewalk. The doctor patiently helps him
up and walks him over to the ambulance,
which takes him back to the hospital.
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