Holby City

Hello…..hellooooooo *echoes bounced off the empty auditorium*. I won’t be surprised if no-one here to read this. I haven’t flexed my writing skills for a long time which, since I last wrote, have been mainly confined to writing rapid-fire emails in my line of work.

I absolutely agree with the sentiments and the necessity for various orgs and bodies to write in to express their concerns about the latest portrayal of a child being used as an involuntary sign language interpreter in a recent Holby City’s episode surrounding a deaf father undergoing a heart op. It is good to educate the people who made it.

While we are expressing our dismay and horror about how negative this portrayal have turned out to be and bite our nails whether this is laying down precedence and further malpractices, I can see how we can turn this into a useful platform to bolster the case for better and accessible services within the public health services.

After watching a See Hear segment which covered this episode behind the scene, following Memnos Costi and his talented daughter, Kachina. It doesn’t strike to me that the Holby City team have gone about and blithely nailed down this story as a normal everyday theme. I believe they are actually deliberately making a snapshot of what does goes on within our wards which have, unwittingly, provoked a strong debate about it. Of course, this recent episode goes against the grain to our aspirations of what make a good health service. Holby City isn’t a mainly aspirational program as it tackles different issues each week and I am sure we are not the first or last people to complain about their portrayal of different issues.

This shouldn’t be the end. This is gold dust for our campaign for better access to health services as it is all laid out before our own eyes of what can go wrong by not providing an accessible health service. We should lobby the Holby City’s writers to make a follow up story. We should lobby health care professionals showing an example of bad practice. We should lobby to raise awareness of the importance for front line NHS staff to quickly provide the right and appropriate communication support as too often they just don’t do it. We should lobby the commissioners and NHS procurement teams to highlight the dangers of a weak and inefficient supply chain which undermine provision of appropriate qualified sign language interpreters through cost-saving. We can think plenty of scenarios to follow up this episode featuring Memnos and his daughter. Don’t let this golden geese run away from us. Any publicity is good.