Air Evac Gives Tell City Students Real-World EMS Career Lesson

Air Evac spent Thursday with Healthcare Professional students at Tell City Jr.-Sr. High School, giving them a look at emergency medical services, career opportunities and the role air medical crews play in patient care. The school said students left with a better sense of what the work looks like when seconds matter and when a patient needs help beyond what a classroom can show.

That lesson matters in Perry County, where every ambulance call has direct local stakes. The county had an estimated 19,320 residents in July 2024, and Tell City remains both the county seat and the largest city. Indiana officials say EMS answers more than 2,000 calls a day statewide with more than 25,000 emergency medical personnel, but a state workforce assessment warned that shortages of EMS workers remain a top challenge. The same assessment pointed to long shifts, low wages and high physical and mental stress as pressures on recruitment and retention, and the 2024 annual report said low wages and insufficient retirement benefits were the main problems for 35% of respondents.

For Tell City students considering that path, the next steps are concrete. Indiana’s EMT course requires at least 159 hours, including 16 hours of hospital and ambulance field time, and students must pass both a psychomotor skills exam and the National Registry cognitive exam before they can work in Indiana. The state also says EMS training institutions must be certified, and the route to paramedic is longer still, with 452 hours of training plus 1,000 to 1,300 hours of internship work.

Tell City Jr.-Sr. High School has been stacking up other hands-on health-care exposure, too. The school recently thanked Amber Shaw, Leonard Hahus and PCMH for giving Intro to Healthcare students a CPR refresher, another sign that the district is trying to connect classwork to the jobs Perry County actually needs. That fits Indiana Graduation Pathways, which lets students tailor graduation requirements to goals such as enrollment, employment or enlistment and includes employability-skills experiences.

Air Methods, which runs Air Methods Kentucky, says its program operates six helicopter bases serving Kentucky and southern Indiana and helps more than 100,000 people a year. The company also says interactive training helps attract and retain EMS clinicians, making the Tell City visit part of a broader workforce pipeline, not just a one-day presentation. In a county this small, that pipeline can shape whether help reaches a neighbor fast enough when local care is not enough.