Emergency 24/7 | Preview (BBC Two)

Emergency 24/7 is embedded inside the busy Emergency Department at Southmead Hospital, a Major Trauma Centre in Bristol, to reveal the everyday pressures as well as the complex teamwork required to keep the department running.

It will follow staff as they look after patients from diagnosis through to their treatment, encountering everything from car crash amputations, stabbings and third-degree burns.

The series will explore the role and contributions from the multi-discipline trauma team, senior consultants, surgeons and nursing staff and the larger hospital team - seeing how each of them play their own specific part to ensure the best possible outcome.

In the first episode, trauma team leader Jamie coordinates a major response when two young friends are rushed to Southmead Emergency Department after a devastating motorbike crash. Luke arrives by helicopter, paralysed in one leg, while Kieran follows by ambulance with a broken ankle and fractured jaw.

A CT scan reveals severe damage to Luke's vertebrae as Dr James updates his family on the results. Surgeon Neil and registrar Natalia prepare for emergency spinal surgery. Only once they have painstakingly realigned and lifted Luke's fractured and dislocated vertebrae can they discover whether the nerves beneath them have been irreversibly damaged, which could leave him unable to walk again.

Elsewhere, nurse in charge Becky battles to keep the emergency department moving through a relentless Friday night shift. With more patients needing beds than are available and ambulances queuing outside, she moves patients into corridors and onto chairs to ensure no-one is turned away. Meanwhile, security and police are called to deal with an unruly visitor who refuses to stop drinking by a patient's bed.

As the department begins to catch up, horse rider Blythe is finally admitted after waiting in an ambulance, having been kicked in the head by her horse. Nurse Laura fears she'll face a further wait to see a doctor, but when a scan rules out serious injury, Becky, still balancing bed management with frontline care, steps in to stitch Blythe's wound.

Emergency 24/7 begins Tuesday 18th August at 9pm on BBC Two.