[Music] we're back on shift inside the ambulance it's on it's on let's go with more medical emergencies is that a little bit better now and more cameras [Music] there are some new faces this could potentially be quite hazardous and some old friends seriously oh that's disgusting body mounted cameras record every moment nice and slow to show you what goes on behind closed doors caroline can you hear me swedes mikey that is a chunk you'll be on the front line with the ambulance crews from west midlands ambulance service i reckon you could do this job you know take a big deep breath and hold it for me never a wasted moment when i'm being paid by the ambulance service as they deal with three thousand emergency calls each day there's nothing to worry about is that's not too bad petrol is it no you are eager to come into the world aren't you step inside the ambulance i love this job [Music] my car i could not live without my car you haven't got a car my van all right it's the same thing it's got four wheels and it moves you could not cope with leave the cope survive without your van no okay i'm not even staying in my van then we want to get a new car next year you're gonna get rid of one i'll just add to the collection i've been told if i want any more toys i need to get rid of ones if i couldn't ride bikes i don't know what i'd do because you know that it's they're so much a part of my life they're like my hobby my my interests my fun and excitement on the weekends we're we're crazy right we bought a bigger sofa so we can fit the dogs on we've got a bigger bed so the dogs could fit one we've got a bigger car so the dog's good for him i can't imagine like my house with no dogs in it dogs are amazing [Music] paramedic gas clerk [Music] and ambulance technician lee timbrell have been colleagues for five years [Music] they're also mates outside work so this is lee with his bald head put him on oh no sorry you said prescription not description all right sorry i thought you wanted me to describe it but the time for joking is over their next call is in cat one three seven three yeah all right where are we going nine seven yeah three one please two-year-old male unconscious noisy breathing okay thank you with an unconscious child needing their help gaz and lee don't mess around they're at the house in just three minutes toby's terrified mum susan made the 999 call hey toby hello mate my mom what happened in the kitchen he fell back his head on the radiator and he started shaking and then he looked blue and then he was sick and all [ __ ] from it came out of his mouth so he's been sick as well oh yeah and then he fell unconscious for about 10 seconds so did he vomit while he was unconscious or when he came around gaz and lee need to work quickly to find out what's going on crying is a good thing but seeing a child having a convulsion it's always really scary it's not so bad for ourselves when we've actually got some insight into what's going on but i don't think we'd be able to how we do professionally if it was one of our children at home crying means he's breathing susan's on the phone to her husband he's already on his way to meet them at hospital we need to get the top off him he's way too hot one of the first things we do with young children is take the temperature it's often a case with a young child they can't actually sweat so they can't actually lose body heat it was over 38 degrees centigrade which normally means that the promotion is probably having a febrile convulsion so it's very important to strip them off cool them down but not too rapidly has he had breakfast [Music] the body has a defensive mechanism at that age where it will have a fit the fit expels energy and expels heat if you've never seen it before it's extremely scary he's not going to like you doing this that's a good thing i'll choose 4.9 it's okay as a category 1 pediatric case operational manager greg smith is sent to the scene as backup temperature of 38.6 um mum said he was a witness to drop and have a fit um so chances are the drop was him starting to have faith rather than from him hitting his head and then having a fit [Applause] fortunately gaz and lee have the situation under control yeah it looks like febrile started to have he fell banged his head there's no buzz baggy mosses at the back we couldn't 100 to guarantee the chain of events leading up to the fall was it the fit that caused him to fall or did he fall bang his head and have the fit so we deemed it was best for him to be seen by the pediatric staff at the hospital after a convulsion like this and with his temperature alarmingly high gas and lee want to get toby to hospital for further checks if you just want to pick him up febrile convulsions are a normal thing if they're running a bit of a temperature yeah there's nothing you can do about it even the best medicines in the world oh there you go with him okay specializing yeah but everything goes out the window when it's your room [Music] toby's four-year-old brother oliver needs to come to hospital too but he's not very keen you see lee's driving that's why you can't stay here on your moon darling are you sorry oliver wait can you tell all your friends i have this effect on kids with both children now in tears gaz and lee are eager to get moving but before they can head off they need to get toby's temperature down all right mom do you want to try and give him that he might take it better off you then off the liquid paracetamol should bring his fever down [Music] [Music] toby's medicine is starting to take effect so gaz can get ready to drive the family to hospital thank you for coming he scared me little man so seeing a fit is scary but seeing a fit in your own young child is really scary good to go lee yep moving off [Music] with his temperature coming down toby's perking up have you took that off your finger did you take that off [Music] oh that look of innocence angelic look that i know you is look so chill [Music] [ __ ] home again to not do that again we'd much rather he come here be assess for a bit and then be absolutely fine and go home than the opposition we've seen your table and it's all right now no it's never a waste of our time with kids we're going to take him in on the trolley mob look after little and get him off toby will be taken to the children's ward and kept under observation [Music] [Music] it's quarter to six on a warm may evening paramedics matt rodwell and preet lally are at base when their next call comes in 999 activated so what we've got then pray we have a 35 year old female with breathing problems possibly asthma worsening over five and a half million people in the uk suffer from asthma and the month of may with its high pollen count is peak season for asthma attacks they're flagging you look yeah yeah yeah you know what if i just i suppose i mean it's not ideal but at least people could still get parked on it the patient is a local mum who'd brought her five-year-old daughter to a gym class but she suddenly started struggling to breathe and her friend called for help nice and easy can't ignore asthma you take the hot seat let me grab your wrist and tell me what is the story right um on yesterday i just had really bad cold and flu symptoms and then the next day this cough started and i've got a cough suffer from any breathing problems i'm not smarty you are okay have a quick listen all right um just stay nice and quiet for a sec because you're deaf in me asthma is a chronic disease kate's airways are tightening and narrowing preventing adequate oxygen getting to her lungs without quick treatment it'll become harder and harder to breathe [Music] whilst my colleagues after this i'm going to put some stickies on your rights [Music] it's just where we're doing your blood pressure so we tell that's all nothing to panic about if you have a weed we will give you a nebuliser let's get rid of that weave and get you breathing back to normal all right and then if you feel better after that then we'll give you i mean are you on any inhalers at all yeah i've got me niners you've been taking them today yeah and now it's just not making much difference at all today kate's inhalers have let her down so the paramedics need to give her something stronger so wait have you had one of these before yeah yes oh sugar there we go a nebulizer turns liquid medicine into a fine mist meaning it can get straight into kate's lungs and open her airways nice and easy you can't ignore asthma [Music] i like your tattoos your tattoos are lovely how many of you got in total the nebulizer should be having an effect by now but kate's still struggling with every breath so her asthma wasn't as controlled at that moment in time as i thought it would be we'll give you another sub utmo so we gave her another nebulizer we asked her not to talk and to just concentrate on breathing in this medication right no talking for a bit nadal just breathe that in [Music] the crew has now been treating kate for 14 minutes despite two doses of medicine she's showing barely any improvement kate was not responding as well as i would have liked it to i could have given her back to baxter beautiful but she needed something else she needed further intervention for her to make sure that her breathing stayed under control because you don't feel completely 100 yeah i would be tempted to get you looked at okay because normally if it's just a flare up of asthma yeah you give subu tomorrow and you're like yeah i'm 100 now it's a lot better but you're still feeling tight yeah hello darling kate's husband aide arrives with her two daughters in me it can be anything it could be pollen it can be dust it could be something it could be anything matt and preet want to take kate to a and e but she just wants to go home the hospital makes it potentially cool well hopefully it won't be all night all right okay let's look at it this way then tweet up i can pretty much guarantee you the minute you get home and you're gonna be there for a couple of hours before you need to call us again okay yeah i can almost i can almost guarantee it the problem you've got sweetheart is it's taking two nebulizers for you to set up your breathing and you're still not right so you're going to go home okay you're going to go home you're still not right you're breathing still quite poor let's be brutally honest and your inhalers didn't work at the in the first place that's why we're here [Music] you know you know it's the right thing to do don't you eventually after a great deal of persuasion kate agrees to go to hospital because it's already getting tight isn't it yeah be truthful with me now exactly with preet unsure that kate's getting any better she needs to check her breathing again let me just have a quick listen before i give you that see if it's made yeah [Music] it's obvious to preach that kate's breathing is getting worse by your own admission your breathing ain't right and we can all see that okay god forbid we have to come back out to you and your mega poorly because that's like needles in arms in veins nebs etc etc you know what i mean that's the last thing you want so matt gives kate another nebuliser apology sweetheart i don't mean to pull it okay if i jump in the front pretty let me know when you want to get cracking thank you now i know what you mean because it comes on so quickly i'd rather treat you now than later when you are gasping for breath so what do you think that'll give me to treat me then so what they can do is give you further steroids um obviously what we're giving you right try and keep it straight like that for me daddy that's it um yeah so what they'll give you is probably maybe something a bit stronger to keep everything open kate's fed up of hospitals it's only been four weeks since she had a tummy tuck after losing six and a half stone in weight and what about you to talk my tummy talking after me i never i never wanted to be skinny but i'm happy i'm very happy the way i am at the minute you know i'm i'm counting the week stay in two more weeks and i can get back to the juice absolutely it's the scar like really bizarre now it's very tiny and your pants cover itself great i always wondered if i wanted to get surgery done because i put on so much weight with this job not i know i'm not huge i know i'm not but when you know you're not comfortable yeah you know your body meets girl yes i used to be like stick thin but but not unhealthy stick thin i was helping no to try to work out what's causing her asthma attacks [Music] [Music] both preet and matt have learned the hard way that asthma can quickly spiral out of control i had a lifetime a lifetime that's when a child and a child i've had brittle aspirin a 17 year old that did not go well we worked on her for over two and a half hours but she ended up being an organ donor we were so sad we went and had a child i can't remember how old they were i think like six seven something like that we get there and she's got all the red flags no accessory muscle use she's tripod and she can't talk she looks anxious is anything you know they got that panicky kind of anxious look and yeah that that that the eyes it's the like help me eyes oh that's horrible [Music] look like he was going on holiday you see his big briefcase i jesus did you enjoy your week at home anyway uh i didn't know i went nice to get away back to whale i went ceiling did you choose sailing because it doesn't matter if you get wet from the rain well shut up [Music] i keep talking about going to new zealand or something like that why not there's a lot of the rings are spilling there let's see where i want to drive to i'm gonna drive to moscow back through europe let me bring us back some vodka it's another day at work for preet lally today she's partnered with leoniskari and they've just dropped off a patient at a and e oh rtc around the corner junction presswood road and longford road in wolverhampton oh right oh there it is look there freshman road literally the road up was a new crush they've been called to a rush hour car crash just 500 meters from the hospital [Music] apparently the rtc's there we've got two vehicles and three patients one may be trapped police on scene two helicopters on the roof a taxi and a car have collided on a busy road in rush hour nicely block the road oh yes the three people two ladies in this car okay awesome all right sweetheart just check them to about breathing chest pains yeah that's what i was gonna do yeah all right so whilst leon deals with the occupants of one car predecessor's taxi driver syed in the other can you just keep looking at me all right just keep looking straight ahead all right i don't think any pain anywhere i've got pain here and my back because my head shake okay tell me if it hurts i'm just gonna put my hand there it's not hurting good good okay look towards me and i look towards that car over there any central sea spine pain i got pain here yeah but nothing in the middle here yeah right lovely okay very bad pain here leon reports back on his patience they've both got chest pain but they're saying it's like a rubbing pain from where the seat belt was it follows the seatbelt line sure breathing's fine so he's fine thank you sired is trapped inside his taxi by the other car in the collision preet needs to assess the safest way of getting him out i'm back basically it's just about getting you out can you lower the seat blow it all the way down i want to move my head i'm scared don't be scared look come listen listen to me you're all right let me feel your fist come here yeah it's a little bit fast just just try and relax the possibility of a neck injury makes getting sired out of the car more complex yes what's this gentleman this uh i'm querying concussion um he's not feeling nauseous or anything but he's saying that everything is hurting him a little bit of a blood vision and such but no other pain anywhere else it's just trying to get him out without moving his head too much that is probably i think we're going to need fire fire to get him out because that car i don't think i'm happy to move that so we're going to need fire to come and do the cutting thank you can we request fire to attend for an entrapment a patient is stable but we're not going to be able to get the patient out and we want to keep his head nice and steady but while preet's been talking to the fire team her patient has already moved himself into the passenger seat you shouldn't you should not have gone against my advice just listen to the person that's telling you said was worried about the car being cut getting the roof taken off and i think in his mind the car didn't belong to him you know it belonged to you know the company or whatever and he just didn't want to take the risk hello hi patient that wasn't trapped was this one against advice he's moved to the passenger seat so we can now get him out now so we don't we no longer have something trapped i did update control i don't know whether so now to that then so let's we agree with what you're going to do yes you're going to get him out it's a precaution why don't we stabilize anyway detect the movement out of the car we're not cutting anything we're just going to stabilize the vehicle if you yeah okay can we stabilize that vehicle please preet now needs to move syed to the safety of the ambulance for further checks all right are you ready to get out the car yeah come on in sweet how'd you feel yeah all good yeah this way [Applause] emergency crew lee stevens has arrived to help out how do you feel i feel alright just the pain on my head uh this eyes and there there it is i think you might you might have been a little bit concussed like you were shaking around a bit are you still feeling quite anxious [Applause] breathe calm but despite what's happened syed is adamant he doesn't want to go to hospital see now your pulse is still a little bit on the high side for me you are just hitting the hundred so you are calming down but not as quick as i'd like you to are you sure you don't want to go to hospital no i told you you know nothing wrong because i would advise you to go yeah i'm walking out really good are you sure yeah if you if you start feeling sick start getting visual disturbances or anything like that discharge from the year something you know anything like that give us a call back all right you are free to go yep [Music] so that was an interesting one many rtc's few yeah i've had i've not had many i think that's my second one since being a parent really yeah i'll get one everybody every other day do you work with you more often [Music] it's 8 p.m and 21 year old trainee georgia parkinson and paramedic stuart punter are three hours into their night shift fallen difficulty in breathing they're on their way to their third patient of the day who's collapsed in the street [Music] what's this [Music] what's your name buddy ryan don brian take my hand with that one so for a job like brian you've got to wonder why brian's ended up on the floor has he been drinking is it something medical is it a condition he has this is why i love this job you never know what you're going to go to and you've got to try and work out what's wrong with somebody when you get there steady oh awesome you had a few too many chandes take a seat on this one buddy right then i know four points tonight because i worked here until four o'clock and i had four points uh all of that since four o'clock all right although brian has had a few drinks today he's adamant that his breathing difficulties are what made him collapse what did you just rebound just lost your balance did you feel dizzy or anything yeah throw operator okay and they said they sent me for a miracle do my breathing test and he said i got lungs like a 93 year old that's not good brian's a lifelong smoker that and his breathing problems have taken their toll on his lungs aging him by over 25 years i said flip me mate i'm only 57. have you had any problems today with your asthma you have you've got your inhalers have you used your blue one yeah yeah how'd you feel now it i'll feel terrible you feel terrible that's why i passed that the more history you can get the easier a diagnosis can become or more complicated i think brian was a bit complicated what came on first your dizziness or your breathing dizziness dizziness and then you felt you couldn't breathe yeah okay we're smoking now 40 odd years it's hard to give up a bit like that isn't it smoking makes asthma worse in the long term but even day to day can trigger an asthma attack well cut them down good that's a start isn't it 10 10 12 a day oh you suppose pop your jacket off buddy i used to smoke about 20 30 a day well that's somewhere isn't it it's starting oh that's good to get down to 10. have you noticed your breathing get better since no right can we take this one off as well i do the detective work continues you're in any pain at all you are where about just reach up middle of my chest in the middle what sort of pain is it pretty sure it's sure i've been coughing anything up on your white flag white flower okay how long have you been coughing that up for ages ages can i have a listen to your chest finally there's a clue to what's making brian feel so unwell i'm sorry now and again it sounds like brian might have an infection on his chest what about this unsteadiness on your feet then are you dizzy now you're dizzy now they ask brian to stand up to check his [Music] balance and when trying to get him to mobilise he wasn't good on his feet he was too vulnerable to be left on his own he couldn't walk he'd already fallen over once that's not like you at all brian is it so maybe there was something underlying that had caused him to fall as brian is unable to stand up georgia and stuart think brian's dizziness could be down to a chest infection if you're not normally dizzy and you're still dizzy now you know you might need some medication for it and i'm washing it all in down russell's on is there any dust or fumes in your work there is yes it's all dawson that doesn't help does it how long have you worked there then you say not long a month ago they took me out full time that's good isn't it you obviously a good worker i took my own full time and gave me full-time employment good contract some steady income isn't [Music] it you're married i'm not no too young for that hello only 21 you're one 21 oh yeah with his charm offensive over brian is left in the safe hands of the hospital's medical team to assess his chest and lungs there we go there you are darling oh i went um i went shopping last night and uh because you know i hit that sweet spot at seven o'clock yep when everything's reduced i add venison sausages for 29 pence [Music] i could just eat chunks of cheese cheese and pork i've just i've got cheese wraps right with salad and then the coleslaw that i've got is cheese coleslaw it's just love cheese yeah what's cheese that's not yours nacho cheese oh i might have the um the feast of kings tonight spaghetti on toast for cheese that does sound attractive until it's a glorious soggy blob i may join you it's lunchtime in the west midlands paramedic michael anslow and student paramedic dimitri holloway might be halfway through a 12-hour shift but there's no time for a lunch break yet we're going to kings winford uh for a domestic assault for a 76 year old female which has come from the police um assaulted by husband who suffers from dementia the husband has uh thrown his wife against the patio door and kicked her while she's being on the floor it must be scary for for sort of the wife obviously husband doesn't know he's obviously not doing it maliciously [Music] the crew arrive in just over three minutes the victim jean has fled to a neighbor's house for safety but she's still clearly distressed are you able to tell me what's happened today gene tell me the joke okay a lot of the time people with dementia don't know and they're not consciously aware of of the situation and they're often forgetting things so potentially jean's husband didn't recognize gene and has seen maybe jean as an intruder and obviously that could have caused the attack and she's been subjected to that quite a few times from what she was saying so it's not the first time it's happened how long have you been married for yeah it's a long time jean's husband punched her in the head the stomach and threw her against a patio door which means she could have multiple injuries can i just check if you've got any neck or back pain so if you just sit nice and still and stay nice and still is there any pain just specifically where i'm pressing anything here no no it's farther up it's like saw where i went on the floor i think okay but nothing sort of in your spine where i'm pressing now so michael wants to check she hasn't got concussion sorry i'm just flipping your glasses off i just want to shine a bit of a bright light in your eyes glasses i could have killed him so you've got a bit of a headache at the moment is sort of your face does that feel sore anywhere if i just saw you i can't see any obvious sort of injury on your head it's probably going to be very sore yeah but thankfully i can't feel any lumps no i think a large proportion in jean's case was the emotional trauma of what she'd been through so it's important to differentiate between her being medically well but then to also offer her the emotional support that she needed do you use crime with carer he said like do you do all the care caring aspects for him yeah he can't you can't do anything now okay but he goes down every week he's gone down really fast as in deteriorated yeah right so he was first diagnosed two years ago and ever since his decline quite rapidly what's going on in regards to the police obviously we've come in after they've been here are you sort of what have they said to you he said yeah they've got somewhere already so i'm not going back in there with it in jean's case it was a hard decision because ultimately it will mean uh potentially separating her and her husband and that's quite hard to think about emotionally when they spent such longer time together is anyone going to be with you throughout the day or a friend or somebody will come eventually do a bit of a welfare check on her make sure she's okay at some point yeah okay fortunately jean's neighbor val agrees to let her stay for the rest of the day jane yeah sure you're going to be okay yeah any problems it's going to take me a long time absolutely you've got good support from your friends by the looks of it and your family so that's always a good sign [Music] any problems feel free to call us back all right thank you very much anytime gene okay all right thank you very much you're welcome thank you for your help have a good rest of the day all right see ya thank you [Music] well that's really sad um especially for the wife when they've been married so long and obviously the husband i don't think is gonna realize what he's what he's done potentially i mean she said didn't she that she was being um assaulted sort of before his diagnosis of dementia um so potentially he's had dementia for longer and she's been putting up with it um potentially six six years yeah that's a very long time it's a very very long time two-year-old toby scared his mum when he had a bad seizure right in front of her he'd suffered a febrile convulsion which is common in young children when they get too hot at hospital he was checked over by a nurse and given more paracetamol to control his temperature he promptly fell asleep for two hours he was soon back home and thankfully hasn't had another seizure since kate's asthma attack was so serious paramedics matt and preet couldn't stabilize her breathing at hospital doctors gave her steroids and a new inhaler and she hasn't suffered another attack since she's healed well after her tummy tuck and is back working out in her beloved gym [Music] syed was at the center of a car crash when his taxi collided with a car it was his first ever accident and he was a bit shaken up by the whole thing luckily he wasn't hurt and was back behind the wheel after a few days rest brian who'd fallen over in the street was allowed home after only a few hours in a e but just a week later he collapsed again this time at work he was kept in hospital overnight given a course of antibiotics for a chest infection and a nebulizer to help his breathing 76 year old jean hurt her head and her hip when she was assaulted by her husband who suffers from dementia sadly gene now doesn't feel safe to carry on living with him in their home he's now moved into a specialist care home for people with dementia gene visits him regularly and says he's now much calmer oh officially up [Music] yes [Music] do