Series follows region’s ambulance service
PRIME-TIME documentary series ‘Ambulance’, following frontline staff at the North East Ambulance Service (NEAS) as they provide vital urgent and emergency pre-hospital care in the region, starts this week.
Now on its ninth series, the team from production company Dragonfly were embedded with NEAS to film footage for the BBC’s BAFTA-award winning series between January and April this year.
At a time when the ambulance service has never been more under pressure, the series follows crews across Tyne and Wear, Durham, Darlington and Teesside.
Each of the 12 60-minute episodes for the upcoming series will feature the work of ambulance staff and the patients they treat during one particular shift, following them in real time alongside their colleagues in the Emergency Operations Centre where decisions are made in a highly pressurised environment.
Over the course of filming, the service’s Emergency Operations Centre in Newcastle and Hebburn handled 162,257 999 calls and 219,844 111 calls, and dispatched ambulance crews to 125,382 incidents – an average of 1,045 incidents per day.
The first episode airs tomorrow on BBC1 at 9pm. As well as featuring emergency incidents, the series highlights a number of issues faced across the North East, such as mental health, domestic abuse, and health and social care issues.
NEAS employs more than 2,900 people and covers 3,200 square miles across the North East, serving 2.7 million people by handling all NHS 111 and 999 calls, operating patient transport and ambulance response services, delivering training for communities and commercial audiences and providing medical support cover at events.
It has three emergency operation centres based in Wynyard, Newcastle and Hebburn.