WORCESTER, Mass. - UMass Memorial LifeFlight is marking 40 years of patient care in the air.

"Our logo from 1982 has been saving time, saving lives," Cheryl Coyle, a flight nurse, said. "It's basically what we do. An ambulance in flight, basically."

Coyle has been a flight nurse for 35 years. She's seen the treatment and procedure improvements first-hand, but she said one thing never changed. 

"Patient care is patient care," Coyle said. "We still had the time factor, the critical care transport. We always took the same clinical excellence in patient care back then."

It's what Jorge Yarzebski is still doing now as a flight paramedic. He's been treating patients in the air for 8 years. It's a job he's always wanted to do, growing up less than a mile from the hospital. 

"My mom blames my dad," Yarzebski said. "Every time we heard it take off we raced to the helipad."

Now, he's the one taking off. Yarzebski said within 10 minutes of getting a call they are in the sky. 80 percents of flights are transports, but the other 20 percent, they are responding to an emergency scene. 

"You're landing on a road, a highway, or a small field," Yarzebski said. 

They work in a group of three: a pilot, a flight nurse and a medic, responding to calls across New England. 

"Vermont, Maine, western Mass," Yarzebski said. "To Connecticut, Rhode Island, the islands."

Yarzebski said no shift is the same and no two flight calls are alike. 

"It flies in a straight line, it's very fast," he said. "So, we shave essential minutes off for patients when they are medically injured or critically ill."