History of the National Health Service Emergency Ward 10 was first broadcast in 1957 on ITV and ran until 1967 and followed the life and loves of the staff and patients of the fictionalised Oxbridge General. ITV later followed this up with General Hospital which borrowed much from Emergency Ward 10 in terms of its themes and focus. The idea of a medical hospital as a suitable and popular setting for a soap opera continued to take root in the 1980s. Casualty, set in an A&E department, was first broadcast in 1986 and has since become the longest running medical drama in the world. At a
The Nurses (CBS TV series) The Nurses (CBS TV series) The Nurses is a serialized primetime medical drama that was broadcast in the USA on CBS from September 27, 1962, to May 11, 1965. For the second season, the title was expanded to The Doctors and the Nurses and it ran until 1965, when it was transformed into a half-hour daytime soap opera. The soap opera, also called "The Nurses", ran on ABC from 1965 to 1967. The series is set in Alden General Hospital (patterned after Roosevelt Hospital) in New York, and the primetime program starred Zina Bethune as Gail Lucas, the young nurse,