Question:

How does the Paramedic Program work for California students, and how long does it take to complete?


Answer:

Our Paramedic Program is 2 courses, each with hands-on training/testing sessions. However, if you will not be testing for the AEMT certification during your enrollment in the program, you can postpone all of your hands-on sessions until the end of the second course and complete them all together in one block. This may take some intelligent scheduling and possibly some extra fees, because most of our pre-scheduled sessions are spread out on weekends, and each site has different sessions each weekend. To fill in the gaps and to try to keep the sessions in the same location (as much as possible), you may have to schedule a few private "1 on 1" sessions around our pre-scheduled sessions.



Please Note - Pre-scheduled skills sessions are included in tuition, private sessions are not. Also, private sessions are only 1 day, instead of 2 like normal sessions. The fee for a private skills session is $300 + 3.2% processing. For private sessions, you must have a friend/colleague accompany you to the session to serve as a helper. If you cannot bring your own helper, you can hire one for $100 per session through the site Skills Instructor.



There is a total of 7 sessions for the Paramedic Program.



As for clinical internship, California does not approve students of out of state schools to attend clinical internships in CA, and you will have to travel for this. The closest Paramedic Clinical sites to you, that we currently have agreements with, are in AZ. NOTE - There are some limitations from site to site in regards to allowed shift length (typically 12hr shifts) and availability. With that said, please know that our Clinical Coordinator will do everything she can to schedule your shifts as closely to your requests as possible.



If completing the hands-on skills training and clinical internships in one big block, you are looking at about 6 weeks to 2 months to complete everything. You will have 20 months to complete the entire Paramedic Program. So, if you complete the online didactic for the first course in 4 months (average completion time), then complete the online didactic for the second course in 6 months (average completion time), this will leave you about 9-10 months to complete the live training portions.