BOSTON -- In a medical emergency, every second counts. That is why Pro EMS of Cambridge has taken steps to train health care professionals for every scenario.

NewsCenter 5's Heather Unruh reported Wednesday on the program.

"He's still in V-fib," said Jay Starzynski, a paramedic for Pro EMS, of Cambridge.

"Let's go back to CPR. We were originally called to his house for respiratory distress," he said.

Starzynski is part of a medical training program to improve his skills as a paramedic.

"The deeper you get into the scenario you get the more real it becomes. You trip over your own wires or equipment. You run into complications you weren't expecting with the patients," Starzynski said.

The patient who has stopped breathing is a sophisticated dummy.

"The mannequin can breathe. You can put IVs in the mannequin. You can do all of the things that you would expect to do on a real patient," said Chris Kerley, the head of the Center for Medics.

The state-of-the-art simulation lab is run by Pro EMS of Cambridge. It began training medical professionals from the Greater Boston area about two and a half years ago.

"We have paramedics, doctors and nurses train in situations that don't happen on a daily basis. So when they do happen their aware on how to treat them," Kerley said.

As medical professionals hone their skills, in a nearby control room, Kerley watches every decision that is made.

"We play back everything they've done and everything they've said. Then I point out to them things they've done well, and things that they could improve the next time," he said.

The goal is to avoid real-life mistakes, so that real-lives are saved.

"Once you take that back and you've done it in the simulation lab there's a bit of muscle memory there. So next time we go on a call hopefully we won't make the same mistakes," Starzynski said.