"The Waiting Room" Film Screening w/ Director Peter Nicks

The University of Iowa Public Policy Center held a free film screening of the character-driven documentary The Waiting Room, a film that uses extraordinary access to go behind the doors of an American public hospital struggling to care for a community of largely uninsured patients. The screening was on Tuesday, April 9, in the Pomerantz Center's HNI Auditorium (Room C20) at 7 p.m. Pomerantz Center is located just north of Market Street and west of N. Clinton Street, across from the Pappajohn Business Building.

Peter Nicks, the director, producer and cinematographer of the film, held a discussion after the film, moderated by Iowa Public Radio's Ben Kieffer. This event was free and open to the public.

Nicks was featured on Kieffer's talk show, "River to River" the morning of Tuesday, April 9, to discuss the film and emergency care with PPC director, Peter Damiano and Mike Miller, Associate Medical Director, Assistant Clinical Professor, Department of Emergency Medicine at the University of Iowa. You can listen to the show here. 

The film offers a raw, intimate, and even uplifting look at how patients, staff and caregivers each cope with disease, bureaucracy and hard choices. The ER waiting room serves as the grounding point for the film, capturing in vivid detail what it means for millions of Americans to live without health insurance.

Nicks is an Emmy Award-winning documentary filmmaker who has produced projects for network, cable and public television exploring topics such as immigration, journalism and technology. He has also directed media strategy for two social networking start-ups and developed transmedia storytelling projects that make use of emerging social media platforms. Nicks worked as a staff producer for ABC News in New York and as a producer for the innovative PBS documentary series Life 360.

Nicks recently produced and directed the documentary-social media hybrid The Waiting Room, which explores the impact of America’s health care policy on one county hospital and the population of largely uninsured patients it serves. He earned his Masters in documentary filmmaking from the University of California, Berkeley in 1999. Nicks lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with his wife and two children.

This event is co-sponsored by FilmScene and the University of Iowa’s Carver College of Medicine and the Office of Cultural Affairs & Diversity Initiatives; Center for Human Rights; Chief Diversity Office; College of Dentistry & Dental Clinics and Department of Preventive & Community Dentistry; College of Public Health and Department of Health Management & Policy; Department of Communications Studies; Department of Emergency Medicine; Department of Sociology; Gender, Women's & Sexuality Studies; Global Health Club; Injury Prevention Research Center; Institute for Cinema and Culture; International Programs; KRUI; Obermann Center for Advanced Studies; Office of the President; Public Policy Center; and School of Journalism & Mass Communication.