“It was kind of squirting a bit,” says Vancouver General Hospital emergency department registered nurse Mike Devine, reflecting on a recent day at work and the bloody wound he was tending to, that of a male patient who had been struck forcibly in the head.
“This object was probably about 600 pounds and he had . . . an arterial bleed, so it had a bit of pressure behind it.”
While just an average day in the ER, what was out of the ordinary on that particular day was that the treatment of the trauma was caught on camera as the 40-year-old Lynn Valley resident is among the life-saving care providers and patients featured in the six-part second season of Emergency Room: Life + Death at VGH, premiering this week, Tuesday, April 12 at 9 p.m., on Knowledge Network.
“It is graphic in nature, but it’s real,” says Devine.
“I think this year what the show is really showcasing is the various aspects of our department and the social issues that we have surrounding our clientele. We have quite the eclectic crew of people that come in, anything from a small cut on a finger to mental health issues,” he adds.
The documentary series was created by Knowledge Network in partnership with Vancouver Coastal Health and Vancouver-based Lark Productions. It aims to offer audience members insight into one of B.C.’s busiest emergency departments (staffed by 245 doctors, nurses, social workers, physiotherapists and administrative staff who serve more than 90,000 patient visits annually), and its only accredited Level 1 Trauma Centre. The first season was well-received, racking up more than 1.2 million TV and online viewers in addition to being awarded Best Television Show and Best Documentary at the 2014 Leo Awards as well as two Canadian Screen Award nominations.
Shooting for season 2 occurred over approximately 80 days and crew members were given full access to the hospital’s ER.
Devine is pleased to be making his debut this season, having volunteered to be part of it after overhearing a discussion between one of his colleagues and a director regarding their desire to find more staff interested in being on-camera.
“I was more than willing. I thought it was such a great first season that I really wanted to be involved. . . . I chomped at the bit,” he says.
After expressing his interest, crews followed Devine around for a day on a trial basis and the following day put a microphone on him, his involvement in the season secured.
“It was a little nerve-racking at first. Being in a hospital setting you always use appropriate language so that was never an issue with the microphone, but having the cameras following you around took a little getting used to. But a day or two into it, you didn’t notice them. They do a really good job of staying out of your way and being in the background. Some of the stuff they were able to film, just being in the background, was pretty amazing,” he says.
Devine is grateful for the opportunity the series provides to showcase to friends, family and the community at large what goes on in his workplace as well as the efforts and dedication of hospital staff who consistently go above and beyond for their patients.
“The great thing about the show is highlighting . . . what our emergency department goes through on a daily basis and also how big the staff is. It’s not just doctors and nurses, it’s an eclectic crew. It’s your security staff, your social workers, (physiotherapists), respiratory therapists, it’s very broad,” he says.
“I like what I do, I’m very proud of my profession. I love the role that I took in this health care situation. I love emergency medicine, I think it’s fantastic, it’s very dynamic, it’s very fast-paced and you never know what you’re going to get,” he adds.
In addition to showcasing the realities of the ER, Devine hopes viewers of Emergency Room: Life + Death at VGH also take away an important realization regarding who the department is intended
to serve. “I think people that use this as a clinic also need to be aware that it’s not always your best option. You can sometimes go visit the walk-in clinics or your GP. The people that do come in for various things like medication requests that don’t really need to, they can fill up our department very fast and it makes it difficult to see everybody who needs to see us in an emergency situation,” he says.
Devine is proud to be celebrating 10 years of nursing and five years of working in the VGH emergency department.
His mother had suggested he consider the vocation a number of times over the years. However, “I always said that it was not my cup of tea. I actually didn’t like the sight of blood when I was younger. But I was working in various factories and working on a printing press at one point. I looked around and I looked at everybody who had been there for 20 plus years and I said, ‘This is not my life, this is not what I want,’” he says.
This prompted Devine to go back to school and he spent a good chunk of his 20s in college and university.
Prior to his current position in the emergency department, he worked as a spine nurse. “I loved it, I thought it was my career, I thought that’s where I was going to stay. And then on a whim, I ended up in emergency medicine to help out because they were short staffed and I fell in love with it, so I moved on. Where I am right now, I’m proud of being an emergency nurse and to be able to showcase that is definitely an immense amount of pride,” he says.
In addition to airing on the Knowledge Network, new episodes of Emergency Room: Life + Death at VGH will be simulcast on the series’ website, knowledge.ca/er. Forty-nine web shorts are also available, offering behind-the-scenes stories, including three focused on Devine: Medical Mechanic, The One About. . . My Grandfather’s Stroke and That’s Not a Cut.
