Air ambulance flies out to Halesowen hoax call in BBC's Ambulance

The seventh episode of BBC series Ambulance will come to television screens this evening, offering a 'behind the sirens' insight into West Midlands Ambulance Service (WMAS).

Tonight's hour-long show will see Midlands Air Ambulance dispatched from Cosford, along with two ambulance crews, to a suspected unconscious patient suffering 'major trauma' in Halesowen.

Paramedics and doctors rush to the scene after hearing the person in need has fallen down the stairs, left unable to move and bleeding.

But after a call handler probes the caller, who is heard giggling and muttering in a strange voice, the line is disconnected and staff soon realise they have been tricked by a hoax caller.

The hoax call forced the air ambulance away from genuine emergencies across the West Midlands for 12 minutes - just one of more than 1,000 hoax calls WMAS receives each year.

Viewers will meet paramedics Sham and Nina during tonight's documentary, which highlighted just a handful of the thousands of calls WMAS was called out to during filming.

The pair are dispatched after 94-year-old Lucy is unable to help husband Harold following a fall near a doorway in their Telford home.

Nina is forced to scramble through a ground floor window as petite Lucy struggles to unlock the bolts at the top of her front and back doors.

The paramedics finally help 97-year-old Harold to his feet but refer him to a specialist team to assess the couple's needs at home as a hospital visit is not needed.

Nina, who was an events manager at RAF Cosford before she joined the ambulance service, said: "I've gone from organising gala dinners and flying displays to this, so massively different.

"We meet people in their hour of need. Just having someone there sometimes is all you need and it's a real privilege to be the one person that they turn to."

The last episode of the series will be aired next Thursday.