Quote – Emergency – Ward 10: 500th episode

The Rt. Hon. J. Enoch Powell, M.B.E., M.P., Minister of Health.

❝ON the occasion of the 500th episode in the series Emergency—Ward 10, I should like to send my congratulations to all concerned with this production. Combining, as it does, good entertainment with a wealth of information and technical detail, it has impressed millions of viewers with the fine work done by the doctors and nurses and all others who make up the hospital team.

The programme has also given valuable support to health education and preventive medicine by stressing, for instance, the importance of immunisation against infectious disease, by reminding parents of the dreadful penalty on failure to take simple precautions against burns and scalds, or by emphasising the indispensable voluntary service rendered by blood donors and by those trained in first aid. In short, the programme has made a real contribution to saving life and preventing disease.❞

THE BRITISH MEDICAL ASSOCIATION’S SPECIAL COMMITTEE REPORT

“IT is noteworthy that Associated Television’s “Emergency—Ward 10”, which exemplifies the fictional approach to medicine and doctors, is one of the most popular television serials, and is watched regularly by an enormous audience. This programme has helped to relieve many members of the public of anxiety and fear about hospital treatment. The series also helps to make them familiar with the work of hospital doctors, and it presents them as likeable human beings. At the same time these things are done in a way which appears to provide compulsive viewing for television audiences.

Those responsible for “Emergency—Ward 10” deserve thanks for the work they do in drawing the attention of their audience to such important matters as the need for radiographers, the danger of unguarded fires, and the urgent need for careful driving. Warnings about matters of this kind are introduced incidentally and with skill during the course of an episode, and this is an extremely effective way of conveying information in accordance with the accepted principles of preventive medicine.”

(“Medicine on Radio and Television”. Memorandum of Evidence submitted by a special Committee of the Council of the British Medical Association to the Committee on Broadcasting under the chairmanship of Sir Harry Pilkington, 1961.)