THOMASVILLE, GA (WALB) - There aren't a lot of jobs available in many career fields right now, but the demand for EMTs and paramedics continues to grow. One reason, an aging population that needs more emergency care.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the job growth for paramedics is expected to increase much faster than average. "Oh demand had always been high for EMTs and Paramedics. Finding the good ones is the problem," said Paramedic Chuck Lester.
Southwest Georgia Technical College in Thomasville now offers day and nighttime EMT classes. "There's a lot of industry around here that work shift work so if they get off at seven o'clock in the morning they can come in for a couple hours, do some learning and hopefully get out of that nasty shift work industrial type of deal and get into a career," said Lester.
Each county is mandated by the state legislature to have a certain number of ambulances based on their population. "So the more people that are being born more people still living longer now a days, we're having to have more ambulances on the ground to cover that amount of people," said Lester.
Along with training career life savers, Southwest Georgia Tech offers CPR and AED training to anyone who needs or wants it. "Something we do all the time at churches, schools, and other organizations so we can not only provide this training here at the college, but we can go to where the training is needed," said Vice President of Economic Development Gary Pitts.
School officials say hopefully you will never have to use this training, but it's a lot better to be safe than sorry.
The next CPR and AED course will be held at 8:30 Wednesday morning at the Thomasville campus.
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