Lottie W
Dec 23, 20239 min
Updated: Jan 22
Whether you're preparing for your UK medical school interviews or simply aiming to broaden your knowledge, we have collated the best medical documentaries to watch in 2024 for your medicine application.
Medical documentaries and TV shows are excellent sources of educational medical content and real-world experiences.
We don’t recommend trying to watch all the good medical documentaries on this list, but watching a few which have piqued your interest might provide you with some good talking points for your UK medical school interview or MMI and even your medicine personal statement.
The key to standing out is not just in consuming documentaries about medicine, but in how you engage with it. Reflect on what you've watched, consider how it may have piqued your interest in complex medical issues such as the NHS or Harold Shipman, and use it as a springboard for deeper exploration.
Forgotten Heroes Of The Covid Frontline
The NHS Crisis: Can It Be Fixed?
Junior Doctor Diaries
Lucy Letby: The Nurse Who Killed
Diagnosis
Coronavirus Explained
Bad Surgeon: Love Under The Knife
8. Extremis
Fire In The Blood
The Great NHS Heist
Confessions Of A Junior Doctor
The Surgeon’s Cut
Junior Doctors On The Front Line
Human: The World Within
Crisis Pregnancy Centres Uncovered
Unfortunately, this content is only available with a UK TV License.
1 episode, 29 minutes
January 2023
Forgotten Heroes Of The COVID Frontline tells the story of the COVID-19 pandemic from the eyes of healthcare workers now suffering from its consequences. It describes the shifting perspectives from being “heroes” to the hardships now faced, feeling abandoned and undervalued by the UK government and NHS organisation.
This documentary brings attention to the realities faced by healthcare workers in the UK. Often healthcare degrees and careers are glamorised by the media and fictional TV programmes, whereas in practice, healthcare workers face poor working conditions, real-term pay cuts and public scrutiny.
This documentary is a brilliant educational asset to demonstrate your understanding of the realities of working in the NHS in its current climate.
👉🏻 Read more about how COVID-19 has affected the NHS service
Unfortunately, this content is only available with a UK TV License.
1 episode, 29 minutes
January 2023
BBC Panorama investigates the current state of the NHS including hospital backlogs, increasing waiting times and the workforce crisis. It discusses the issues affecting the NHS in 2023 and what can be done to try and fix the broken system of NHS health and social care.
For UK medical school applicants, this documentary provides all the information that you will need to have an informed discussion with your interviewer on the real-world challenges that the NHS faces in 2024. We love how short this documentary is too, so it won’t require too much of your time to watch!
👉🏻 Read more about the NHS workforce crisis and plans to address it in 2024
4 episodes, 50 minutes each
2019
Set in the Northampton General Hospital, Junior Doctor Diaries follows a group of newly qualified junior doctors in the UK. It highlights the struggles they face, as well as their successes on the job.
Although a slightly longer investment, we love that Junior Doctor Diaries are free to watch and provide a realistic view into the working life of a doctor in the UK.
We love how it shows both the good and the bad sides of the role, and how it discusses the doctor’s perspectives of how to handle the difficult situations they face.
👉🏻 Read more about ethical decision-making in medicine
Unfortunately, this content is only available with a UK TV License.
1 episode, 29 minutes long
August 2023
Lucy Letby was a neonatal nurse at the Countess of Chester Hospital, now convicted of the murder of 7 babies and the attempted murder of 6 more. This documentary hears from some of those affected by Lucy Letby, including the family of a deceased infant and her colleagues who raised concerns at the hospitals. It uncovers the mismanagement by hospital bosses and the lack of action on the raised concerns.
The case of Lucy Letby hugely affected the NHS and the medical world in 2023. This documentary raised many themes explored in your UK medical school interview, including the importance of whistleblowing and the 4 pillars of ethics.
You should be able to link all of these themes to the behaviours and actions described in the documentary.
👉🏻 Read more about the Lucy Letby Case
7 episodes, 50 minutes each
2019
This docu-series follows Dr Lisa Sanders, a US internal medicine doctor, as she searches for the diagnoses of patients with rare and unresolved symptoms. The show is adapted from her advice column in The New York Times magazine. Each episode follows a different patient with a different medical condition.
These individual episodes provide a bite-sized example of how medicine is a problem-solving field. It shows the huge impact that an undiagnosed medical issue has on a patient, from dealing with the fear of the unknown to the emotional burden of fighting the healthcare system for answers.
It also talks through the stages of making a diagnosis, from history taking, examinations and investigations, and how differential diagnoses are ruled out.
3 episodes, 20 - 26 minutes each
2020
Produced by Vox, this American docu-series explores subjects surrounding COVID-19 and the pandemic, including the outbreak, vaccinations and effects of COVID-19, including the mental health crisis that it uncovered.
Coronavirus explained provides a handy summary of the pandemic, how it began, how it continued and how it was handled. It teaches the first principles of what COVID-19 is, what a pandemic is, and how they happen.
Medical school interviewers will expect you to be educated about COVID-19 given the huge impact it had on the NHS and the UK. Although Coronavirus explained does not focus on the UK’s handling of the pandemic, it provides a good background for your understanding as a whole.
👉🏻 Read more about other hot topics affecting the NHS in 2024
3 episodes, 38 - 50 minutes each
2023
Synopsis
This docuseries explores Paolo Macchiarini, a thoracic surgeon convicted of aggravated assault and bodily harm to his patients, through invasive, dangerous and experimental surgeries, which led to 3 patient deaths.
Why We Love It
Bad Surgeon: Love Under The Knife highlights exactly why medical regulation is so important. Macchiarini is an example of an egomaniacal doctor who put his experimental surgeries above the lives of his patients.
This contradicts everything that medicine stands for, including the 4 pillars of ethics. In your medical school interview, you could discuss these 4 pillars concerning how Macchiarini treated his patients.
👉🏻 Read more about informed consent in medicine
1 episode, 24 minutes
2016
This short documentary focuses on an Intensive Care Unit in America, and the doctors in the specialist palliative care team at the hospital. It illustrates the emotional difficulty of working with patients requiring end-of-life care and decisions.
As discussed, the media has often glamourised healthcare careers, and it is easy for the emotional toll of medicine to be disregarded. This documentary highlights the difficulty of the role and the decisions doctors must face.
At your medical school interview, the knowledge and information gained from watching Extremis can demonstrate your commitment to understanding the role of a doctor as a whole, including the difficult parts.
👉🏻 Read more about how to break bad news as a doctor
1 hour 27 minutes
2012
Fire in the Blood addresses the issue of access to antiretroviral drugs for the treatment of HIV and AIDs in different parts of the world. It describes the multinational pharmaceutical monopoly over drug patents and the cascading impact that this has on patients across the world.
Fire in the Blood highlights distributive injustice in access to lifesaving medications, as a result of corporate greed. Justice is one of the 4 pillars of ethics of medicine, making this an excellent documentary to demonstrate your furthered interest in medical ethics.
👉🏻 Read more about NHS scandals and controversies
1 hour 35 minutes
2019
The full-length documentary is available on Vimeo for an access fee, however we recommend the free YouTube shortened version. The Great NHS Heist describes years of outsourcing and gradual privatisation of the NHS, and the impact this has and will have on patients.
Understanding the structure of the healthcare system is important for medical school applicants and medical students alike. How healthcare systems are organised massively affects the distribution and quality of care that can be delivered to patients.
The NHS core values and target of the NHS aim to ensure everyone has equal access to quality healthcare. Privatisation compromises this. Privatisation of the NHS may be a subject which appears in your UK medical school interview.
👉🏻 Read more about privatisation of the NHS
Originally aired on Channel 4, it can now be found on YouTube
4 episodes, 45 minutes each
2017
In the height of the junior doctor strikes in 2016, Confessions of a Junior Doctor follows 3 different doctors at different points in their training, dealing with the daily challenges of the NHS.
We love Confessions of a Junior Doctor for the same reasons that we love The Junior Doctor Diaries - it gives a realistic perspective of the jobs, situations and tasks that junior doctors are faced with in the hospital. This will give you a greater insight into what the path a medical degree will set you on.
👉🏻 Read more about how much it costs to become a doctor in the UK
Netflix
4 episodes, 55 minutes each
2020
The Surgeon’s Cut follows the life and work of pioneering surgeons in their speciality. It celebrates the advancements in science, technology and medicine which have allowed surgeons to treat and improve the lives of many patients.
For any aspiring surgeon, The Surgeon’s Cut gives medical school applicants an insight into the hardships of being a surgeon, as well as the triumphs and satisfactions that come with it.
Unfortunately, this content is only available with a UK TV License.
4 episodes, each 1 hour long
September 2019
This docu-series follows a group of newly qualified junior doctors navigating working in the NHS and experiencing life as a doctor for the first time.
This series provides a really good insight into the experience of working as a junior doctor in the NHS, pre-COVID. We love how it explains each doctor’s path into medicine, their motivations and their struggles. We feel that this is one of the most realistic junior doctor series, as it shows both the good and bad parts of the job.
👉🏻 Read more about working and training in the NHS as a doctor
6 episodes, 55 minutes each
2021
Each episode of Human: The World Within explores a different body system, how it works and how this enables us to thrive as humans. It includes personal stories about how the body system has facilitated the lives and goals of individuals.
Focusing on birth, the cardiovascular system, digestive system, immune system and the nervous system, we love Human: The World Within. It highlights the anatomy and physiology of different body systems in context to the functions they allow us to do. This reflects the type of learning that you will do in your preclinical and early years of the medical degree.
BBC Panorama
Unfortunately, this content is only available with a UK TV License.
1 episode, 29 minutes long
February 2023
This documentary follows an undercover investigation into UK non-NHS Crisis Pregnancy Advice Centres providing misleading “pregnancy advice” to women seeking medical abortion treatment. These centres are often discretely funded by anti-abortion organisations and exploit their vulnerable patients seeking advice regarding their unplanned pregnancies.
The anti-abortion movement has been a recent hot topic, with the overturning of Roe v. Wade by the US Supreme Court in 2022, leading to abortion becoming criminalised in many US states. In 2023, there were calls for the government to introduce legal protections for women seeking abortion in the UK.
This is such an important topic for UK medical school applicants to be aware of, as it’s a significant concern for many patients in the NHS and your interviewers will expect you to recognise this.
👉🏻 Read more about abortion in the UK for medicine interviews
Documentaries are an excellent way of expanding your knowledge base around the issues facing the NHS, the life of doctors, ethical dilemmas in medicine and the science of medicine.
They provide large amounts of information in manageable chunks, in an entertaining and enjoyable format!
You don’t have to watch all, or any, of the documentaries on this list in order to excel in your UK medical school interviews, but if you’re looking for a documentary to supplement your revision, these are the ones we recommend!
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