With all due respect to Beachdoc, not all Wilderness First Aid courses are designed to train you to the level of professional paramedic or EMT. I teach a course which is one weekend long; it requires Standard First Aid as a prerequisite, so the total course is about 2 weekends (there is a combined 3-day course which combines Standard and Wilderness First Aid). I talked to a Saint John Ambulance volunteer last night who had taken a WFA through Red Cross many years ago, but unfortunately didn't have much time to compare notes and see how it differed from mine. <br><br>The course I teach is basically to go over the differences in treatment when medical help is more than 10 hours away. Up to 10 hours, Standard First Aid *should* be sufficient.<br><br>I also teach early recognition of potentially life-threatening conditions such as systemic infection (blood poisoning) and stress to the students that if one of your travelling companions develops such a condition, the vacation is OVER - I don't care how much you paid to get here, or how much you were looking forward to it, if your buddy has a cut that's gotten infected and red streaks are emanating from it, he needs emergency medevac immediately.<br><br>A good WFA course should also deal with when to call for emergency evacuation (and when you don't need to) as well as the basics of how to prepare a makeshift helipad and how to approach a helicopter or aircraft. <br><br>There are important differences between First Aid for an office environment and First Aid for 15 miles out on a X-country ski trail, but you don't have to be a licensed paramedic to be of use.<br><br>Just my $.02 worth. :-)