I did a weekend long Wilderness First Aid course this weekend, taught by www.soloschools.com. I have to say the course was excellent, and even exceeded my expectations.

There were 25 students in the class, many of whom were scoutmasters. There were casual outdoors people and a guy just back from Iraq. I was one of two EMTs and quickly found out that I had to forget most of the street learning I had. The key point was that you're not prepping a victim for a 10 minute wait for an ambulance and another ten minutes to the hospital. You're prepping them for hours of waiting and/or hours of extraction. Quite an eye opener.

The instructors were a husband/wife team. The husband was a former British Special Forces with both battleground and wilderness medicine training. The wife is an EMT.

One of the most interesting things they said was that there is no need to carry a ton of medical supplies into the bush. Gloves and bandaids will cover the majority of occurrances, and your hiking/camping gear can be adapted to cover most of the rest. This was evidenced by building a traction splint for a broken femur out of a trekking pole, bandanas, spare clothing and 550 cord. It was actually easier and quicker to attach to the victim than the ones on an ambulance. They did stress carrying "bivouac gear" for spending an unexpected night with someone with injuries. Their suggestions were: some form of shelter, fire starting material, food, a cup to cook in, some form of string and a foam pad. Heavy duty leaf bags were mentioned numerous times for varied uses.

We did a wide range of scenarios from sprained ankles to unconscious patients. I'm quite plesed that I took the course, and will likely take more from them, at least the Advanced WFA, and hopefully the EMT-W.

Congrats on taking this class -- its both fun and informatative. Lots of good information and 'real world' scenarios.

Teacher