Wilderness First Aid 2-day course this last weekend featured an escalating set of scenarios that featured the stress of trying to recall and perfectly apply half-learned protocols taught minutes before. Symptoms became less obvious, multiple, hidden, and patients became less reliable reporters, multiple, and eventually unconscious and unresponsive - until they were screamingly out of control and verbally combative.

I felt my alpha rise twice. Once triggered by a smirking, lying, patient who kept challenging and resisting me in various small ways until he got to me - I had to step away and get someone else to finish running the protocol. And once in a multiple patient scenario that began with screaming hysterics - where my instinct was to dominate the scene by any means necessary to control and calm, but my job was to care for only one and let my fellow students experience and deal with the situation as best they could. [They all did great.]

My lessons included the need to at least think through ways to deal with more scenarios and to look for opportunities to get suprised in simulations from time to time.

Edit: And of course, now I think all my FAKs are inadequate and will have to be changed.