Hello, My son is interested in starting with EMT during his sophomore school year. How can he be EMT? We are in Houston, TX. Looking for some advise here.
Thanks,
Ask your local fire/EMT station and go from there.
Check with your local community college. EMT-B ( B for basic) classes are offered through most (all?) community colleges.
However, TX requires all EMTs to be at least 18 years old and have a high school diploma or GED to quality for licensure.
https://www.emt-national-training.com/texas-emt.php
Your son may not be allowed to register for EMT classes unless he’s old enough to qualify for a state license. He cannot volunteer or hold paid employment as an EMT without a valid TX EMT-B license.
Also if he takes the EMT classes now, his training will out of date and ineligible for licensure by the time he graduates from high school. (There is a limited time frame allowed after the completion of classes to take & pass the state and national licensing exams.)
There may be other courses that he can take that will help get him ready for EMT training such as general First Aid, CPR, and First Responder. He also should find out if his school district offers EMT, CNA, or Fire School as part of the career education programs. In my school district in Maryland, students can take certain career courses in junior year, and others in senior year so that they are ready for the licensing exams as soon as they meet age and high school graduation requirements…
Is he doing this to get jobs? Or what?
If he wants a certification he can get at age 16, I believe, he should consider lifeguard training. It also includes basic first aid. And where I am, there are always places looking for lifeguards to hire.
Thank you Everyone for your kind response. I liked to suggestion starting him with CPR, First Responder, and First Aid. This could be a good starting point for him. He wants to go in medicine and he thinks EMT will give him good experience starting with medicine and emergency.
While EMT can be a fine starting point for someone interested in medicine, it offers a very limited view of medical practice (pre-hospital only) that is not at all reflective of what a medical career is like. Your son will need additional and broader exposures to medicine that provide a more complete view of medical practice.
EMT-B has a extremely limited scope of practice. (Basically they can’t do anything beyond offering basic first first aid.)
For medical admissions, merely having EMT certification meaningless. It’s only considered if the applicant has had actual, extended, hands on experience working as a EMT.
He could also look into “Explorer” programs, offered though the boy scouts, but you don’t need to be a scout to participate. In our area, the are Explorer programs for EMT, fire fighters, law enforcement, law/mock trial, engineering, business (I think), and any number of potential careers. Different programs have different activity level and time commitments, but they’re high school age appropriate, and give the students a feel for the profession…
And any EMT work he does in high school (which he can’t do in your state until he is 18) won’t even be looked at by medical schools. They don’t care about High School activities.
Check your local hospitals. Some hospitals offer summer programs for high school students interested in healthcare professions. Students get see what the day-to-day jobs of various different medical professions look like–physician; nurse; therapist (physical, occupational, respiratory, etc), PA, nurse practitioner, clinical laboratory technicians, etc.
Also, your son can get exposure to patients and clinical medicine at nursing homes, rehab hospitals and group homes for the mentally or physically disabled, These sites are more welcoming of volunteers than EMS squads or hospitals and often have more relaxed age and certification requirements. While these lack the cachet of the ambulance squad’s rush to the rescue like you see on TV (and which any EM doc will laugh out loud at and roll their eyes at because real life doesn’t look at all like that…,) they do give a pretty good approximation of what >75% of a future physician’s patients look like.
My daughter was able to join local EMS squad as a “Junior” member and be on weekly ride-alongs to demonstrate her commitment. Rather than taking night classes during all fall/winter while also trying to excel at High School, she decided to forego much of her summer and take a 5 day/week program, followed by the state licensing test. Fees were paid by the EMS squad.
Was a good way for her to mature, get first-hand look of results when people do anything “in excess” (more effective than my lectures), and gain a sense of competence and independence from us helicopter parents 
It also was an introduction to the “real world” vs. the glorious TV portrayal, because lengthy form/reports have to be filed with regulators for EVERY call, the rig to be checked/readied and restocked - and sometimes cleaned from various “discharges”…
Yes, the EMT classes are indeed very comprehensive, but the actual EMS duty frequently has little to do with physiology, but (maybe fortunately so) amounts to little more than a glorified Taxi service. Of course, than there is the very occasional MVA, overdose, anaphylaxis, or CPR-in-progress, where all that training and experience has to come together during an intense half hour.