ITV Central's Health Correspondent spends a day with West Midlands Ambulance crew

Health Correspondent Hannah Bechelet spent 12 hours on shift with a West Midlands Ambulance Service crew

Imagine starting your working day by getting a call that someone is having a cardiac arrest and you are needed to try and save them.

And then when you are on your way to them you find out they have already died so you are needed to lift their body back into bed and tell their next of kin the news.

That is exactly how the crew from West Midlands Ambulance started their day when myself and a cameraman joined them on shift recently.

My heart was racing as we drove, siren on, to the care home, not sure what I would witness. The crew though, were calm and collected and above all, compassionate.

The care they showed to the staff, the dead woman's niece, and above all the dead woman was an example in just how caring you need to be to be a paramedic.

I was touched by how they spoke to the dead woman as if she could still hear them and constantly used her name. They then helped her niece contact the undertakers, taking their time to give her the care that she needed after just finding out that her aunt had died.

Then it was on to the next job, another suspected cardiac arrest. This was of a man in his early 40s and again my heart was racing as I wondered what we might see.

Luckily on route we heard the news that he was breathing and conscious so it was no longer an emergency.

WATCH: Hannah Bechelet speaks to Steve Clamp on ITVX about her experiences with the ambulance crew

What followed though was a lesson in how patient paramedics can be. The man was awake but as his son had reported he had had a seizure, and as he hadn't long had a brain operation, the crew thought it was important to take him to hospital.

He was frustrated with this, although not with the crew themselves, as he didn't want to be back in hospital and there was a lot of swearing. Then there was a lot of waiting as he took a shower. The crew took it in good grace though and we drove him up to the hospital.

A trip to a local hotel was next, where a woman had been taken ill in the swimming pool. It was rather surreal arriving with paramedics whilst people were eating lunch, and some even preparing for a wedding; a reminder that paramedics can be needed anywhere, at any time.

Luckily the woman recovered quickly and the crew felt it was best she followed up care with her GP. One of them was contacting the doctor for her when a call came through that a man was in cardiac arrest and as we were the nearest crew, we headed there with one of the paramedics, whilst the other stayed behind to finish off with the previous patient.

This meant I sat in the front of the ambulance as we blue-lighted our way to the incident. I offered my assistance to the paramedic Claire as she was alone, and she suggested she might ask me to help with chest compressions whilst she got the defibrillator out.

I was rather daunted by the thought of the pressure of trying to save someone's life in that way, but thought about how paramedics have that sort of pressure everyday they go to work.

Sadly, when we arrived at the job the man was already dead and CPR was stopped. It was incredibly sad to see the emotions of his family as they realised they had lost their father and husband, but once again I saw the compassion of the paramedics. I'm not sure how I would feel dealing with this level of grief on a daily basis.

The last two call-outs of the day were two elderly people who had dementia. I had joined the crew specifically to see their use of an app called Consultant Connect, which allows crews dealing with frail over 75s to contact a consultant at the hospital to discuss whether the patient is best treated at home or as an in-patient. In many cases if care can be given at home then it is preferential because the person can stay in the environment they are used to.

The first home we went to was a man with a severe nosebleed. His carer had called the ambulance as they couldn't stop the bleeding, and unfortunately the paramedics weren't able to either.

They gently gave him care in his home before transferring him to the ambulance and taking him to hospital.

While he was happy to be taken by them and understood he had a nose bleed, he wasn't able to remember details and constantly asked the same questions - who I was, where he would be going once at the hospital, where his wife was and how he would be getting home for example. Each time the crew answered as if it was the first time he had asked it.

The final call out saw the crew use that app that we were hoping to see them use. An elderly man had fallen over and couldn't get up. Again, the crew showed great patience and care as they helped him to stand and then walk into his lounge, gently reminding him to keep walking each time he forgot.

The man wasn't injured but the crew felt that he could benefit from some extra care to help his mobility so they called a consultant who arranged for a home visit to be made within the hour. The man's family were thrilled that the extra care had been arranged.

I left the shift exhausted. We had started at 6am and it was well after 6pm when we left. In that time the crew had just half an hour break and other than were constantly helping people or ready to go to whichever call out they were sent to.

They arrived at places with no idea exactly what they were going to find and showed everyone they met or treated compassion and care.

Calling an ambulance is often one of the worst days of people's lives, but for the paramedics it is their everyday life.

I left the day with a new sense of admiration for the work they do, and the knowledge that I couldn't do it.

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