'Lenox Hill' Preview: Doctors fulfill many roles as healer, priest and cheerleader at NY’s busiest hospital
It took a pandemic for us to pay attention to the back-breaking, heroic work being done by frontline health workers across the country. While we might have been used to the soap drama treatment of hospitals and healthcare, Netflix's newest medical eight-part documentary series promises the real thing.
Taking you into the bowels of Manhattan's Upper East Side hospital, Lenox Hill, it follows medical professionals, across different specialties on the "frontlines of healthcare". The documentary will offer an intimate look at the lives of four doctors in particular — two brain surgeons, an emergency room physician, and a Chief Resident OBGYN, as they deal with a variety of emergencies, and illnesses.
Eschewing a clinical approach, nothing seems off the table as the camera follows them, on and off the clock, as they navigate the highs and lows of working at the 450-bed acute care facility -- touted to be one of New York's busiest.
With extraordinary access and an unflinching eye, the series shows each physician's struggle to balance their personal and professional lives and delves into the personal journeys of some of the patients they are treating. From birth to brain surgery, each case offers a rare inside look at the complex, fascinating, and emotional world of medicine. To top that off, in the healthcare business, they are also competing with "some of the greatest health institutions in the world".
As the trailer shows, Lenox Hill is open to people from all sections of society. "We take whoever, whatever. You have to come here with a really open mind," says one of the doctors while commenting on the different types of patients walking into their hospital and the health complications they come in with. In short, when they put on their white coats or blue overalls, they have no idea what the day is going to bring. If you felt that they look a bit like superheroes with capes in the trailer, you are not wrong.
"You cannot choose what comes at you here. It's like the frontline," says one doctor, comparing it to a warzone. The documentary was shot just before COVID 19 hit the US. We can only imagine that the pressures depicted in this documentary would have grown multi-fold since New York was one of the worst-hit cities in the country, with a staggering number of cases, more than China or UK in one city alone.
Not many documentaries about the medical profession take into account the emotional toll on doctors or their personal demons as they treat people, some of whom are in a critical condition. Instead, we focus on the miracles they perform. Since we put doctors on a pedestal, we treat them as death-defying gods, rather than as human beings.
But they are human, with the same frailties and limits as all of us, which they circumvent or bottle up every day. You see the doctors constantly reiterating in the trailer that they are treating human beings here -- there is no margin of error that is acceptable, no matter what they are going through.
While taking these critical life-saving decisions, the trailer also shows how these physicians take the time to connect with their patients. Often they also become the ones to whom patients reveal their darkest thoughts to when the suffering is too great. In one clip, a patient confesses to his doctor that he wants to die and his doctor, looking visibly upset, saying, "Oh, Terry!"
Fulfilling multiple roles of healer, priest, and cheerleader to people at their most vulnerable moments means that their workplace is an arena of life and death. We see one doctor stare off into the distance during a rare break and then sit, shoulders hunched, looking defeated. 'Lenox Hill' promises to show us what these modern-day superheroes have to face day-to-day, emotionally, and mentally.
'Lenox Hill' premieres on June 10 on Netflix and will release all eight episodes together.