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Birmingham Heartlands hospital has one of the busiest intensive care units in the region. The team look after the most critically ill patients across the Midlands, offering around the clock care 365 days of the year. When the rest of the world is sound asleep, this highly skilled and dedicated team are up battling to keep their patients alive.

In the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic, the NHS has never been under more pressure. We follow three inspirational nurses, Neelam, Niamh and Charlene, over the course of a night shift to find out what it’s really like to be an intensive care nurse. We find out how they witness first-hand the realities of life and death; it’s these nurses who are with patients in their final moments and who must deliver the devastating news to families when they don’t recover. How do they cope with the pressures of the job and how do they keep each other going, especially in the face of such adversity over the last 18 months?

Nurse associate Neelam followed in her parents’ footsteps when joining the NHS, and she recently won the prestigious Frontline Worker of the Year Award. Band 5 nurse and new mum Niamh faces a daily battle as she tries to juggle nightshift working and having a baby at home. Niamh was inspired to become an intensive care nurse following the loss of her own father, who passed away after a month at Birmingham Good Hope intensive care unit when she was just 12 years old. Fellow band 5 nurse and mum Charlene is one of five sisters who are all nurses. She survives on very little sleep as she tries to balance, work, studying and having a young family.