EXCLUSIVE: Elinor Lawless joined the cast of Casualty in 2021 playing Dr Stevie Nash and is at the centre of the current History Of Violence storyline.

As Dr Stevie Nash in Casualty, Northern Irish actress Elinor Lawless has had some incredibly hard-hitting storylines since joining the show in 2021. Her current one may be her most thought-provoking though as she deals with her trauma following attacks and violence towards the staff in Holby ED as part of the series A History Of Violence story thread.

The story has seen one nurse seriously assaulted and quitting his job as a result, while other staff members and Stevie herself have faced threats. In an attempt to counter the abuse, Stevie is trying to implement a zero-tolerance policy but it is proving an uphill battle for the medic.

Speaking exclusively to Express.co.uk, award-winning actress Elinor revealed that the extent of the problem in hospitals didn’t come as a huge shock to her when she got the scripts due to her own personal experiences. Recently she found herself on the other side of the stethoscope for a few days as a patient on the ward and she witnessed firsthand what staff go through.

“I was in a hospital recently for a few days myself and I witnessed staff being afraid of a particular patient and in a bed on a ward because of how they were being spoken to and how they were being [treated]. They refer to patients like, ‘Bed 16 are bad’, you know, and you could see how that one personality was dominating the ward and the pressure that was putting on the staff in the ward and getting in the way of people being able to do their job,” she revealed.

“And that doesn’t mean these people, it doesn’t mean that level of abuse means that these are good or bad people. An ED is an incredibly vulnerable place and the atmosphere is rife for that because when you’re dealing with people who are sick, it’s amazing what pain can do to some people. The idea of loss or lack of sleep – it’s already a hotbed for that kind of potential, that kind of behavior,” she said.

Elinor Lawless joined Casualty in 2021 but has plenty of real life experience of the NHS (Image: Getty)

The storyline is also resonating with real-life NHS staff as Elinor revealed she had recently got chatting to an NHS nurse on the street who shared her experiences.

“I had a conversation recently with an A&E nurse in the street. She was having conversations about these spans of fear. There is a level of abuse that staff face every day, whether it’s low level or you know…” she trailed off.

“In here [Casualty] we have a kind of heightened reality within the drama of the Holby ED. But I mean, she spoke about chairs getting thrown, abuse being hurt.

Extremely warm, friendly, and talkative in real life, Elinor has a huge empathy for NHS staff having spent a lot of her childhood witnessing its workings.

The 42-year-old mum of one spent a lot of her childhood in hospital with a heart condition and also comes from a family full of nurses. Her experience has given her nothing but respect for the NHS.

Dr Stevie Nash has been struggling in Casualty (Image: BBC)

She said: “I had a heart condition as a kid so I was in a hospital a lot and I remember being really aware of [what goes on] from an early age.

“There’s a lot of nurses in my family and I remember like, my, my aunt, coming home from a late shift and she lost a patient, she’d lost a young woman who had been suffering for a long, long time.

“And to watch somebody…what the staff, what those people witness every day is, I don’t know how they do it. It’s these people who deal with sick children, and vulnerable adults, and how does one survive emotionally and then throw an element of abuse into that they give staff even verbal abuse – that’s a lot to ask.

“It’s a lot to ask of people. But the one thing I will say is it doesn’t get doesn’t put people off the job. These people are built to care.”