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Emergency Room: Life + Death at VGH is a six-part medical documentary series which premiered on British Columbia's Knowledge Network on January 21st, 2014. It follows doctors, nurses and staff at Vancouver General Hospital as they cope with real patients from the city of Vancouver and surrounding area. VGH is the second largest hospital in Canada and British Columbia's only level 1 trauma centre. Stories of stabbings, car accidents, heart attacks, and life threatening disease are shown alongside everyday cuts and sprains, drunks, and other minor cases, and episodes contain graphic images of wounds, blood, and/or routine and invasive medical procedures.

The series was directed and co-executive produced by Kevin Eastwood, produced by David Moses, and executive produced by Andrew Williamson and Louise Clark of Lark Productions.

Development and Production
The series was conceived by Knowledge Network CEO Rudy Buttignol to depict the everyday experiences of the medical personnel who care for people in crisis.

Lark Productions, Vancouver General Hospital and Vancouver Coastal Health partnered to develop the series, and spent six months in negotiations to decide how to give the production crew maximum access while ensuring no patients suffered privacy violations, and that proper consent was obtained from everyone who appeared on camera. .

Filming took place over an 80 day period between February and May 2013. Approximately one third of VGH's staff opted out of participating, thus requiring the production team to blur their faces if they happened to appear in a scene that was used in the final edit. The camera crew also avoided filming certain patients undergoing mental health issues, due to the difficulty of obtaining informed consent, but were present for hundreds of other traumas without complaint from hospital staff or patients.

Release
Episode 1, "No Typical Day" premiered on January 21st, 2014 and attracted Knowledge Network's largest recorded premiere audience for a doc series. The entire series is currently available to stream on its official website to viewers with Canadian IP addresses.

Critical Reception
Pamela Fayerman of the Vancouver Sun wrote "It has gripping life-and-death drama, a fast pace, and all the mayhem of a Hollywood action film...For unpredictable drama and insights into the mindsets of health professionals who choose this line of chaotic work, the series seems unbeatable." Marsha Lederman of the Globe and Mail wrote that the series "tiptoes through an ethical minefield in order to deliver what its creators strongly believe is important television; a peek behind the curtain at the hugely pressing issue of public health care." . VGH emergency staff also spoke highly of the program. ER physician Dr. Shahin Shirzhad, featured in the show, told Global News: “We’re often dealing with resource issues, bed problems, not enough space or money to prepare care for everybody the way we’d like to...I think it’s been good at giving a very realistic picture of what we experience.”

Director's Cardiac Arrest
During a break in filming, director Kevin Eastwood traveled to Los Angeles on business with a colleague. Outside a car rental office, Eastwood suffered a sudden cardiac arrest and collapsed. His colleague dialed 911 and administered CPR until paramedics arrived, and Eastwood was defibrillated four times in the ambulance before his heart started beating again. He spent 10 days at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center recovering, and a cardioverter-defibrillator was surgically implanted in his chest.

Eastwood told The Georgia Straight that by the time he returned to filming at Vancouver General Hospital, word of his incident had spread among the staff. "They're the ones who keep underscoring how incredibly rare it is for somebody who has that kind of spontaneous cardiac arrest to, first of all, survive, and even those who survive, there are a small percentage who do not have brain damage. Less than 10 per cent survive in the first place, and a fraction of those are not permanently damaged." "This show changed my life," Eastwood says.