999: What's Your Emergency?

The first film in the series explores the struggles of becoming an adult in modern Britain. Cases include a young man in Southend who's been stabbed multiple times, an 18-year-old who got very drunk on his first night out in central London, and a 19-year-old student in Nottingham who's taken an overdose of anti-depressants and drunk hair bleach.

In the UK, 1.6 million people are dependent on alcohol, and alcohol misuse directly costs the NHS £3.5bn a year, with admissions to hospital due to drinking doubling in ten years. Up to a fifth of ambulance call-outs are alcohol-related, but one paramedic reports that some weekends three-quarters of his patients are affected by booze. Sometimes ambulances are called simply because the patient is too drunk to remember where they live or want a taxi ride home. And middle aged, middle class professionals are at as much risk of ending up in an ambulance thanks to drink as the young and irresponsible or long-term alcoholics. Cases include a middle-aged executive who's drunk so much he's become incontinent, covering himself, the paramedics and ambulance in urine and faeces; a woman who's passed out after a day at the races; a 28-year-old who's lost everything through drinking; and a woman having a psychotic episode brought on by chronic and long-term alcohol abuse.

This episode follows paramedics as they do their best to help patients with mental health problems. With one in four of us facing such issues at some point in our lives, it's become the job of the emergency services to pick up the pieces, often facing complex and difficult situations for which they have little training. Paramedic Maria Stanley is called to a multi-storey car park where she is first on the scene and has to talk a suicidal man away from the edge, while Kirsten Harper and Amy Siddall race to help a man who's having suicidal thoughts and whose daughter can't cope. Another patient has heard imaginary voices most of his life and is threatening suicide. He's at breaking point, but says that mental health services said he's 'not crazy enough' to get treatment. Meanwhile, with self-harming becoming one of the most prevalent mental health issues, Selina Conway is called out to help a man who's been cutting his arm. And in London, crews are called to help when a failed suicide bid leaves a middle-aged man trapped under an underground train.

This episode focuses on call-outs to patients fighting for life, and the medical, ethical and emotional challenges their care creates, not just for the paramedics, but also for the friends and family who may be left behind.

This episode focuses on the older generation, who now account for two thirds of ambulance calls. With 11 million people in Britain over the age of 65, the NHS is feeling a greater strain than ever before.

This episode focuses on babies - from births to over-protective parents and from very poorly children to those facing neglect and abuse