Between life and death - BBC documentary in NCCU

A BBC1 documentary team spent six months filming in the Addenbrooke’s Neurosciences Critical Care Unit last year – and the result is Between Life and Death, a powerful hour-long film, which was broadcast on 13 July at 10.35pm.

Richard Rudd with his father Richard

Director Nick Holt and assistant producer Marina Parker became part of the hospital team, working with staff in NCCU, the Emergency Department, and Intensive Care to identify families who were prepared to share their stories.

The film follows three patients during their time at Addenbrooke’s, including Richard Rudd – a 43-year-old who was paralysed in a motorbike crash and left with brain damage as a result of subsequent complications. His family initially told doctors that he would not want to be kept alive – but after a period of waiting, he began to show voluntary eye movement and was able to answer ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to questions. He is now in a lower-dependency unit near his home.

Nick Holt explains what it was like working in NCCU and making the film:

“Every day, throughout the country, there are families sitting at loved ones’ bedsides facing an extraordinary life-or-death decision, and I wanted to capture that process with all its emotional and ethical difficulties. Addenbrooke’s was an obvious place as it has one of the country’s leading neuroscience units.

“We could never predict how it was going to work – all we really knew was that each day a new series of intensely emotional human dramas unfolded in the 21 beds in the unit. We’d film patients as they came in, then talk to the family to find out whether they were happy to take it forward. I explained it was a journey we’d go on together, but could be stopped at any point, even right up to transmission. Interestingly, not one family said no, and no one ever told us to stop filming, even in their rawest moments.

“The experience was life-changing for me. Much of what I held to be true was turned on its head. We often think that if a machine is the only thing keeping us alive then we’d want it switched off, but life and love has this phenomenal pull. You can’t underestimate the life force running through each and every one of us. I’ve realised none of us can know how we would feel unless we were there, in that bed, facing the terrifying possibility of your link to life being severed.”