Air Ambulance ER

Across the country elite teams of everyday heroes are bringing the hospital ER to the roadside. Through one summer we follow the helicopters of the UK’s air ambulance service, as the on-board medics save lives using frontline techniques honed in the world’s toughest warzones. Tonight, a dramatic accident in South Shields demands all of the doctor’s trauma skills; a cyclist has a life-threatening head injury on an Oxford canalside; and a speedway rider leaves the track at 80mph.

Across the country elite teams of everyday heroes are bringing the hospital ER to the roadside. Through one summer we follow the helicopters of the UK’s air ambulance service, as the on-board medics save lives using frontline techniques honed in the world’s toughest warzones. Tonight, a mother and daughter have a high-speed motorbike crash; the helicopter pilot has a tricky landing on the Lake District’s highest pass; and a 5-year old girl needs an urgent rescue to save her leg.

Criss-crossing Britain, the documentary continues to shed light on the men and women who work on the air ambulance. Pressure mounts from the outset as teams race to the scene of a traffic accident in rural Oxfordshire when a family car leaves the country road, plummeting 30ft into a ravine. Concerns grow, too, for a jockey who has fallen off her horse - sporting a serious open leg fracture, she's given a dose of painkillers three times the amount that would normally be administered to an injured British solider - and the search for a lost paraglider yields surprising results.

Speed and astute decision-making are at the fore on the hottest day of the year when the team help a motorcyclist who finds himself underneath a minibus filled with partygoers in fancy dress. Attention swiftly turns, though, to a 16-year-old boy left with a major head injury after falling from his bike without helmet, and, in Darlington, a man needs to be extracted from his car following a collision. There is also some confusion over an accident involving, reportedly, a wooden post.

There is no shortage of real-life drama in this week's penultimate episode when the team are called to a building site to treat a roofer who has suffered a fall and picked up a nasty leg fracture. Alternative transport, meanwhile, is required to reach a 16-year-old asthmatic struggling to breathe on a Lake District mountainside. Meanwhile in Durham, a cyclist is involved in a serious collision and needs urgent medical assistance.

In the final episode of the series, the team take to the skies to perform lifesaving skills on an 11 year old boy knocked over by a car in the Isle of Wight, resulting in a serious head injury. A hard-as-nails granny, meanwhile, is remarkably calm about her extreme ankle break, and laughing gas does the trick during a trip to a paintballing activity centre to treat an injured player. The clock is ticking, too, when a brewing thunderstorm threatens a callout to rescue an injured motorcyclist who is trapped in a ditch.