NHS launches festive films

With the NHS preparing for some of its busiest nights of the year, the films, which support the NHS’s Choose Well campaign and highlight the dangers of drink-related injuries and incorrect use of services, can be viewed by searching for ‘Bizarre Choose Well’ on Youtube.

In the first film, an increasingly-aggravated businessman is forced to listen as a woman lists the drink-related injuries ailing others in the waiting room. Despite her disgust at their excesses, she sees nothing wrong with expecting doctors to perform the “public service” of cutting up her oversized frozen turkey using their powerful clinical saws.

In the second video, friends of young man, Rick, are enjoying a drinking game in the cafe, but it is only when Rick himself arrives that you see they are actually in an A&E waiting room. The drinking game has already gone wrong for him – and doctors can only advise him to wait until the black marker pen on his forehead wears off. All of the characters’ stories are based on real-life cases.

Around 40 per cent of all A&E attendances are for alcohol-related injuries and illnesses. And at Christmas, alcohol-related A&E attendances increase dramatically.

The Christmas specials follow on from the series of three films released by the NHS at the beginning of winter, which have received almost 30,000 Youtube views. These feature women expecting urgent treatment for botched false nails, a pushy mum desperate for her son to be seen by senior doctors for his diarrhoea, and even a man hoping A&E staff will turn their hands to helping out his poorly dog.

William Roche, regional Medical Director at NHS South of England said: “These comedy films support Choose Well, a national campaign which encourages people to think carefully about their condition before they go to A&E. As many as one in four people who go to A&E units could use alternative services like pharmacies or GP surgeries, or don’t need any kind of treatment at all.”

The films can be seen here www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5-mk8HVVnw and here www.youtube.com/watch?v=zhvehfvyr2Y.