Ambulance

8.31pm on Saturday night, and West Midland Ambulance Service takes a call from a distraught woman whose husband has collapsed on their lounge floor. The call hander must stay cool-headed and coach the woman and her daughter over the phone in how to do CPR while ambulance crew Katie and Sarah race to help.

By midnight, the impact of Saturday night drinking is beginning to show, as calls pour in to the control-room reporting numerous fights and violent attacks. Controller Glennis has to juggle her time between trying to help a crew who've been searching for an elderly man, who's fallen in an alleyway, and a high-priority call for a street brawl.

In an episode which begins with the life of a man in jeopardy, paramedics Natalie and Nat face an agonising decision of whether to move a woman in advanced labour, or face the risky prospect of delivering the baby at home, knowing she's already had a stillbirth. In just two shifts, the staff of the West Midlands Service have faced life, death, and resurrection.

One hour into the night shift with West Midlands Ambulance Service and the control centre is already on its third cardiac arrest.

The highly-skilled MERIT team is administering care to a patient who has been stabbed and is bleeding heavily, the fourth stabbing victim the service has dealt with so far that night. But it's not these high-priority calls that take up the most time.

Just four miles away, another crew must stay with an elderly man long after they have treated him as they've spotted he's run out of vital medication and no one else is available at this time of night to organise a refill.

In this edition, Mick and his crewmate Dave are dispatched to help a woman who has called because of pain in her tummy, but she is actually having a massive heart attack and urgently needs the expertise of the specialist Cardiac Unit at Royal Stoke Hospital. Matt and Ryan's shift sees them dispatched to help Les, who has fallen in the shed. Despite having broken his hip, Les seems unperturbed and continues to crack jokes. Meanwhile in the control room, call supervisor Steph receives a dramatic call - a woman has gone into labour on her way back from a training course with a colleague and is in a car on the side of the road. As the crews settle in for the night shift, paramedics Conor and Sam must manage a drunken 17 year old who has been fighting for breath at a lively teenage party.

In this programme, the Merit team - a specialist resource reserved for the most serious cases and with a doctor and specialist paramedic on board - is dispatched to the scene of an accident in Warwickshire, where the young driver requires a lifesaving procedure. In the busy control room, call assessors Rowena and Sally deal with suicidal patients on the phone, while crewmates Jo and Suki suddenly find themselves with several more patients when a car crashes in front of them as they are en route to hospital. And as the weekend shift draws to a close, the crew find themselves most concerned about an elderly woman living alone.

The fifth episode sees the air ambulance dispatched to a woman who has fallen downstairs and is struggling to breathe.

On the trauma desk, Critical Care Paramedic Fay receives a call from a crew requesting the Air Ambulance attend a road accident, but with the only available helicopter on their way to the first patient, Fay faces a tough decision.

In episode six, crewmates Justin and Dawn's first job of the day starts with a call to a woman whose waters have broken.

In this episode it's not the huge distances of the rural parts of the patch that are the problem - it's that several ambulances are stuck at Worcestershire Royal Hospital waiting to hand over their patients and are not available to treat new patients.

The final episode tells the story of how paramedics dealt with the fatal consequences of Storm Doris, which killed four people across the UK.