Hannah Hamad

2017 was something of an eventful year for British actor Jodie
Whittaker. When the BBC announced on the 16th of July that she would be
the one to replace the incumbent Peter Capaldi as the star and titular
character of *Doctor Who*, her public profile was elevated to heretofore
unseen heights. Pandemonium -- as is always the case when a new Doctor
is cast -- ensued, which was of course exacerbated by the fact that
Whittaker is the first woman to play this character; but so, the
following month, did the broadcast of her then current television
vehicle. *Trust Me* was a hospital drama mini-series, cannily scheduled
on Tuesdays at 9pm after *Holby City*, in which a nurse (Whittaker)
assumes the professional identity of a doctor, and gets away with it. In
itself this is a fairly politically charged premise for a BBC television
series, but closer scrutiny of some of *Trust Me*'s expositional set-up,
and in relation to cognate real world events that are mobilised in
service to the plot, reveals the great extent to which the inaugural
episode sets the series up to be a searing critique of toxic cultures of
public sector management, conspiracies of silence over managerial and
political incompetence in the administration of the NHS, the devaluation
of practical skills and emotional labour in the nursing profession, and
the perils and pitfalls of whistleblowing for ordinary healthcare staff
working at the coal face of the situations produced by these things.

At the outset Whittaker plays nursing sister Cath Hardacre, a
long-serving member of the A&E department at Sheffield Alderman
Hospital. Arriving for work, Cath happens upon a patient named Maggie
who has apparently been left unattended in a cubicle for a considerable
period of time in soiled bed-sheets and soiled clothes. Cath's demeanour
doesn't crack for a moment. Instead she acts with alacrity in both
practical and affective ways to put the patient at ease, restore her
physical comfort, and restore the cleanliness of her bed. The depicted
scenario is a clear allusion to the allegations (and subsequently proven
realities) of patient neglect and deficient standards of care that
emerged from scandals such as the one involving Stafford Hospital and
mid-Staffordshire NHS trust in 2008. The characterisation of Cath here
as responsible, caring and capable operates as clear discursive pushback
against the culture of blame being fostered in public and political
discourse at that time, which pointed the finger at nurses, and glossed
over the realities of the impossible working conditions produced for
them by management and government.

::: {#attachment_5221 .wp-caption .alignleft style="width: 460px"}
[![Jodie Whittaker as Sister Cath Hardacre in Trust Me (BBC
2017)](https://cstonline.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/Trust-Me-pic-1-450x253.jpg){.size-large
.wp-image-5221 loading="lazy" decoding="async"
aria-describedby="caption-attachment-5221" width="450" height="253"
srcset="https://cstonline.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/Trust-Me-pic-1-450x253.jpg.webp 450w, https://cstonline.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/Trust-Me-pic-1-300x169.jpg.webp 300w, https://cstonline.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/Trust-Me-pic-1-140x79.jpg.webp 140w, https://cstonline.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/Trust-Me-pic-1-768x432.jpg 768w, https://cstonline.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/Trust-Me-pic-1.jpg 960w"
sizes="(max-width: 450px) 100vw, 450px"}](https://cstonline.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/Trust-Me-pic-1.jpg)

Jodie Whittaker as Sister Cath Hardacre in *Trust Me* (BBC 2017)
:::

Called away to an emergency Cath, in a scene highly reminiscent of
equivalent scenarios and dynamics between junior doctors and senior
nurses described in Max Pemberton's eye-opening memoir *Trust Me I'm a
Junior Doctor*,[^^\[1\]^^](#_ftn1){#_ftnref1} finds a very young-looking
junior physician struggling with a cannula[^^\[2\]^^](#_ftn2){#_ftnref2}
and panicking as the patient goes into cardiac arrest. Without
hesitation, Cath takes charge of the situation instructing the
ineffectual junior doctor to step away and the rest of the team to
commence CPR. Cath's impatience and frustration with the inexperience
and indecisiveness of the junior A&E doctors that she works alongside
later becomes her downfall, following her decision to abandon her plans
to blow the whistle to the press on the entrenched and ongoing patient
neglect she has witnessed, and confront the NHS Trust for which she
works with her evidence directly. Placing her trust in her employers to
act with the institutional integrity she has come to expect of the NHS
proves to be a strategic error for Cath, as the Trust uses her strained
relationship with her junior doctor colleagues as ammunition (in the
guise of spurious allegations of bullying) to discredit her, remove her
from her job and instigate a cover-up of the negligence allegations and
the evidence gathered by Cath that corroborates them. The scandal at
mid-Staffs and the excoriation of front line care-giving nurses that
accompanied it in the public discourses that emerged, are thus crucial
contextual factors in relation to which the premise of *Trust Me*, and
the revenge fantasy narrative trajectory of Whittaker's character are
her narrative resolution are best understood.

The narrative conceit that ensues asks audiences to suspend their
disbelief considerably (notwithstanding documented real-world instances
of imposter doctor identity fraudsters that inspired former A&E doctor
Dan Sefton to write the series)[^^\[3\]^^](#_ftn3){#_ftnref3} as Cath
enacts a highly apt escape/revenge fantasy following her best friend
Alison Sutton's emigration to New Zealand, and her withdrawal from the
medical profession. Retrieving Alison's professional credentials from
the rubbish bin to which they have been consigned by their owner, Cath
packs up and moves to Edinburgh where she lands a job as an A&E doctor
having simply augmented her existing skills as an experienced A&E nurse
(patients and colleagues are quick to remark on what a warm and
effective bedside manner she has -- \*for a doctor\*) by studying
YouTube videos of medical procedures and putting them into practice on
her unsuspecting patients. As the series goes along it becomes less
interested in situating the action in relation to real-world political
lightning rods, and more interested in Cath's interiority and changing
personal circumstances. But in the build-up to the identity switch, the
parallels to be drawn between Cath's situation and the events that
produced the mid Staffs scandal are striking and pointed.

::: {#attachment_5222 .wp-caption .alignleft style="width: 366px"}
[![Sister Cath Hardacre becomes Dr Alison Sutton in Trust Me (BBC
2017)](https://cstonline.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/Trust-Me-pic-2-450x253.jpg){.wp-image-5222
loading="lazy" decoding="async"
aria-describedby="caption-attachment-5222" width="356" height="200"
srcset="https://cstonline.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/Trust-Me-pic-2-450x253.jpg.webp 450w, https://cstonline.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/Trust-Me-pic-2-300x169.jpg.webp 300w, https://cstonline.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/Trust-Me-pic-2-140x79.jpg.webp 140w, https://cstonline.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/Trust-Me-pic-2-768x432.jpg 768w, https://cstonline.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/Trust-Me-pic-2.jpg 960w"
sizes="(max-width: 356px) 100vw, 356px"}](https://cstonline.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/Trust-Me-pic-2.jpg)

Sister Cath Hardacre becomes Dr Alison Sutton in Trust Me (BBC 2017)
:::

At the time of writing, an ongoing crisis in staffing at NHS hospitals
all over the country -- especially during the current winter months when
the operations of the health service are placed under increased and
intensified pressure -- continues to cause controversy, generate debate
and make news media headlines.[^^\[4\]^^](#_ftn4){#_ftnref4} Front line
care-workers continue to be asked to do more and more with less and
less. It seems little wonder then that escape and/or revenge narratives
like *Trust Me* have emerged as fantasies through which we might imagine
fanciful (albeit highly plausible) means by which NHS workers, of the
kind for which Jodie Whittaker's Cath Hardacre/Ali Sutton is an avatar,
might empower themselves to intervene in the invidious working
situations in which they have been placed by a succession of
governments, the most recent of which has proven itself hell-bent on
dismantling the institution that these workers serve.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

**Hannah Hamad** is Senior Lecturer in Media and Communication at
Cardiff University, and the author of *Postfeminism and Paternity in
Contemporary US Film: Framing Fatherhood* (New York and London:
Routledge, 2014).

###### Footnotes

[^^\[1\]^^](#_ftnref1){#_ftn1} Max Pemberton, *Trust Me I'm a Junior
Doctor* (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2008).

[^^\[2\]^^](#_ftnref2){#_ftn2} See Pemberton pp 60-63. A cannula, as
Pemberton explains, is a "tiny little tube that is put into a vein so
that fluids or medicine can go directly into the blood," (p 60) and
inserting one is "a job that usually falls to the junior doctors." (p
61)

[^^\[3\]^^](#_ftnref3){#_ftn3} Tim Masters, 'Jodie Whittaker on her
other doctor role in Trust Me',
<http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-40263351>, 26th July 2017;
Radhika Sanghani, 'Trust me: 'fake' doctors on the NHS are more common
than you realise', *The Telegraph*,
<http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/life/trust-fake-doctors-nhs-common-realise/>,
13th August 2017.

[^^\[4\]^^](#_ftnref4){#_ftn4} Today, for example, health secretary
Jeremy Hunt was forced to defend plans to postpone already scheduled
non-urgent NHS surgeries, Sarah Marsh, 'Jeremy Hunt defends decision to
postpone non-urgent NHS surgery', *The Guardian*
<https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/jan/03/patients-association-charity-attacks-ministers-over-nhs-winter-crisis>,
3rd January 2018.


2017 was something of an eventful year for British actor Jodie Whittaker. When the BBC announced on the 16th of July that she would be the one to replace the incumbent Peter Capaldi as the star and titular character of
<em>
 Doctor Who
</em>
, her public profile was elevated to heretofore unseen heights.

Messaggi di Rogue Scholar

“YOU ALWAYS SAID YOU WERE AS GOOD AS ANY DOCTOR” – TRUST ME: A POST MID-STAFFS NURSES’ REVENGE FANTASY