EXCLUSIVE: Nurse Rida Amaan, played by Sarah Seggari, is currently at the heart of an emotional storyline which sees her moonlighting as a carer for colleague Rash Masum’s dementia-stricken father.

Casualty star Sarah Seggari, who plays Nurse Rida Amaan in the long-running BBC medical drama, has revealed that she gets eye-opening messages from real-life NHS nurses who tell her the issues they have to deal with. Speaking exclusively to Express.co.uk the bubbly 28-year-old said: “I’m surprised how many nurses have second jobs. I didn’t think that was a thing.

“A lot of nurses have messaged me and I just wanna say thank you to all the nurses who do message because it puts things in perspective,” she admitted. “They all have had to take second jobs, a lot of them in care [as carers] because it’s an easy step to that side.

“A lot of them have messaged me about having to do other jobs and they often talk to me about the parking. About having to pay parking for the whole day and being at work the whole day.

“And how just it’s so difficult toeing the line and if you have kids, it’s just mounts higher and higher and higher,” she explained. Sarah’s character is currently in a similar situation to those who are writing to her as she has had to take on a second job as a carer for Rash Masum’s (Neet Mohan) father who has dementia.

Sarah, who joined the show last year, feels the character of Rida is truly representative of what most nurses’ lives are like. “Out of the three people who live together [in the show] Cam (Bradley Walsh), Jody (Anna Chell) and Rida she kind of represents the normal nurse situation the most,” she opined.

Sarah Seggari has played Rida Amaan in Casualty since last year (Image: BBC)

“Because Jodi’s mother passed away and left her a lot of money – well, enough money to get by in sticky situations.

“Cam is obviously from a rich family so he’s not paying any rent really. He’s living in his grandma’s house.

“But Rida is representing, you know, the lower class society and how hard that really is,” Sarah explained.

Sarah has some real life experience of being a carer herself as her Grandfather suffered with dementia, something she has been able to draw on for the current storyline.

“My granddad had dementia so when we did the storyline we had lots of discussions with Kriss (Dosanjh) who plays Ashook (Rash’s father) and it’s hard for an actor to flip between that line when you don’t have dementia.

Rida Amaan is struggling to make ends meet in Casualty (Image: BBC)

“You don’t know what that’s like and you can’t pull from anything and he played it beautifully.

“I was his carer [her grandfather] only for a couple of weeks. I stepped up we all took turns and we had carers as well – professional carers.

“And it’s really hard. It is. They fall over they… I had to pretend to be the Virgin Mary for quite a few weeks because that’s who he thought I was just like Ashok (Masum played by Kriss ) thinks I’m his wife – Rida is his wife.

“You kind of have to go into an acting the role of whatever is going to make you [the patient] eat tonight,” she intimated.