A casting call looking for actors to play “hospital patients” suggests there aren’t enough genuine patients in hospitals.
The NHS has confirmed that the job advert was for actors to feature in an NHS staff recruitment campaign.
A screenshot of a job advert from a casting agency which asked for adults aged 18-80 to play the role of hospital patients has been widely shared on social media. The posts include captions such as “Why would we need paid actors for the NHS??? I thought the hospitals were overwhelmed” and “we are hiring patients now”.
NHS England told Full Fact that the advert was to cast extras for a new “We Are the NHS” recruitment advert.
Talent Talks, the casting agency which advertised the roles, told Full Fact it was “shooting an advert for the NHS where we need passers-by, doctors, nurses, patients and even nightclubbers and runners (athletes) as well as patients (waiting in a waiting room)”.
It added “The patients aren’t real patients, the same as the doctors aren’t real doctors. Its [sic] simply acting”.
This article is part of our work fact checking potentially false pictures, videos and stories on Facebook. You can read more about this—and find out how to report Facebook content—here. For the purposes of that scheme, we’ve rated this claim as missing context because the advert was looking for actors to play patients in an advert for an NHS recruitment campaign.
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