999: On the Front Line

In this episode paramedics treat a woman who has fallen and may have broken her hip. It's only been a few weeks since her last fall, when she dislocated it. Paramedics also help a man with a family history of heart attacks who's experiencing sudden chest pain, a seven-year-old boy who can't stop being sick, and a woman who's passed out in her bathroom and has a deep gash to the top of her head. And, after one too many beers, a man face plants the pavement.

In this episode, paramedics treat a postal worker who has slipped on sewage. He's lying on the ground unable to move and may have broken his hip. The paramedics are sent to a possible cardiac arrest and find the patient in a bin. It's one of the most bizarre callouts that they've ever attended. Paramedics also treat a woman who is in 'ten out of ten' pain with kidney stones, an elderly man with a water infection and a three-month-old baby who's having trouble breathing.

In this episode, a gardener slips off a wall and badly damages his leg. It's going to be difficult for the paramedics to get him out of this tight space without causing further injury. A crew responding to an elderly woman with a head injury are diverted to a man who's collapsed in a car park. Paramedics also treat a woman who lives with migraines and has been in bed with persistent sickness for 24 hours, a woman living with dementia who's found unresponsive by her husband, and a patient with advanced cancer who's losing blood and needs to go to hospital.

The series that follows a typical 12-hour shift with the paramedics of West Midlands Ambulance Service. Filmed during the autumn months as hospital waiting times rocketed and the pressures on the service increased, this series lays bare what life's really like on the front line at three ambulance hubs: Stoke, Stafford and Willenhall in the Black Country. On their way to a job, paramedics come across a road traffic accident that's only just happened. Two cars have collided, and a woman's sitting in the middle of the road in tears and breathing fast. Paramedics also treat a patient whose burst varicose vein leaves their kitchen like a crime scene, a baby who's struggling to breathe and has an irregular heartbeat, and a frequent caller who makes inappropriate sexual comments to an all-female crew. And a track-side suicide is a new and tragic experience even for the most experienced paramedics.