A short documentary about David, an ICU doctor in Wellington. The film opens on his daily routine and the intense reality of being on call: long shifts, high-stakes decisions, and a wardrobe of bright shirts that help him keep some part of himself separate from the work. He’s clear that he doesn’t want his profession to define him.
David traces his path into medicine: years driving buses around Wellington before his parents, Polish-Jewish refugees, pushed him toward a professional career. He describes ICU work as buying time, keeping the body in the right conditions for the rest of the patient to do the recovering. The metaphor he reaches for is gardening.
The second half turns outward. He talks about the strain of a public health system under load: staff morale wearing thin, the small office things that disappear (ginger nuts), the feeling of being treated as a cog. From there he zooms out to the social determinants of health: housing, poverty, the conditions people live in long before they end up in his unit. He argues that health and policy cannot be pulled apart, and that New Zealand owes itself a real conversation about what kind of society it wants to be.
Won the student section of Doc Edge, 2017.