Celebrities: So You Think You Can Nurse?

Five has commissioned a three-part educational entertainment series - So You Think You Can Nurse - to be transmitted early this year. Writer and broadcaster Janet Street Porter, TV presenter Gail Porter and comedian Sean Hughes have been given full access to working wards in Barnsley General Hospital to experience first-hand the daily challenges of being a National Health Service nurse.

The celebrities will be taking part in this life-changing experience of operating as auxiliary nurses-in-training for two exhausting weeks at the hospital.

Each celebrity will be designated a specialist ward within the hospital where the nursing is multi-disciplinary. The principal training will take place on-the-job under the supervision of their ward manager. They will be residing in the primitive nurses’ quarters on the hospital grounds, submerging themselves in every aspect of an NHS nurse’s life.

Janet Street Porter, known for her strong opinions on the NHS will be assisting expectant mothers, helping the midwives with births and c-sections in the maternity wing.

Sean Hughes will battle against his phobia of hospitals and will work on the paediatric and orthopaedic wards.

Gail Porter will be supporting the nurses in Barnsley’s Accident and Emergency and finds herself in tears dealing with the daily traumatic experiences including coping with blood, vomit and bed-bathing patients.

In just two weeks, have Janet, Sean and Gail proved that anyone can nurse?

So You Think You Can Nurse is a Granada Factual London production for Five. The Executive Producers are Michele Carlisle and Ollie Tait and the Series Producer is Sandy Watson.

The series was commissioned by Five’s Controller of Special Events and Pop Features, Sham Shandu.