Saving Lives in Leeds - join us!

Over eight episodes, the series meets a group of world-leading doctors and surgeons here at Leeds as they battle through their ever-increasing waiting lists to transform the lives of their patients and decide who to treat next.
It lifts the lid on the challenging decisions clinicians have to make every day. The programme explores their patients’ emotional journeys and the real impact on their lives and families, against the backdrop of one of the longest waiting lists in NHS history. Featuring in-depth interviews and life-changing operations, each clinician’s caseload takes viewers to the heart of compelling patient stories, as they operate on brain tumours; perform cardiac surgery on babies; provide life-saving liver treatment and carry out a high-risk double hand transplant.
Professor Phil Wood, our Chief Executive, said: “Saving Lives in Leeds really shines a light on the outstanding people working at Leeds Teaching Hospitals carrying out remarkable and world-leading surgery. It highlights some of the challenging decisions they make on a day-to-day basis as they work to ensure our patients get the best possible care. It’s been a really positive opportunity for us to explain the complexity behind some of the decisions we take when managing waiting lists and highlight that we always have our patients’ best interest at the heart of everything we do.”
Watch available episodes here on BBC iPlayer.
Come and work with us
Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust is one of the largest and busiest acute hospital trusts in the country. Every year, we provide healthcare and specialist services for people from the city of Leeds, Yorkshire and the Humber and beyond. We also play an important role in the training and education of medical, nursing and dental students and are a centre of world-class research and pioneering new treatments.
Our vision is to be the best for specialist and integrated care. Our staff helped to define the values and behaviours that we should work to so that we can achieve this vision. This has become known as The Leeds Way, and forms the foundation of our culture and how we work every day.
If you're looking for an NHS career, you couldn't come to a better place. As one of the largest NHS Trusts in the UK, we employ more than 20,000 people across the city.
Our NHS careers in Leeds don’t just include nursing, medical and scientific roles. Like any complex organisation, our jobs in Leeds cover all aspects of ensuring the day-to-day delivery of our services to over one million patients every year.
Visit our Careers website here.
- View our current vacancies here at Leeds Teaching Hospitals
- There are also a wide range of careers in health and care with our partners across the city, via the Leeds Health and Care Academy.
- Careers in Care is a week-long course that gives you an introduction to working in health and care, as well as providing you with practical, hands-on experience of day-to-day care-related tasks. If, at the end of the week, you decide you would like to work in care, you will be supported through an interview process and if successful, a conditional offer of employment will be made. The course is free to access and takes place at Leeds City College 9.30am-3pm Monday-Friday. Find out more and apply for the Careers in Care course.
You may also be interested in joining other NHS trusts in our area - we work really closely with them:
Harrogate and District NHS Foundation Trust
Airedale NHS Foundation Trust
Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust
Calderdale and Huddersfield NHS Trust
The Mid-Yorkshire Hospitals NHS Trust
- The Open University looks behind the curtain of a busy hospital environment: Here, you can watch exclusive interviews with staff from the Trust who candidly share their stories and experiences helping patients and each other on wards under increasing stress.
Thank you
Thank you to everyone - staff, patients, family members and more - who have taken part and contributed to the series.
Thank you to production company Label1, who have produced a professional, life-affirming and often eye-opening documentary series.